Extreme Brewing

Through the lens of Sam Calagione, of Dogfish Head, The New Yorker walks us through some of the post industrial craft beer era. A pretty good read if I say so. Thanks to @MarcBertrand for sending this one my way.

OPENING ANY DAY NOW

I am very glad, that this thing is going to open! Mayne now I won’t quit my day job until the end of summer so that I can 1) afford to go to birreria every day after work and 2) go to bierreria ever day during my lunch hour.

But seriously, who picked out those hideous chairs?

Click photo for Eater’s photo tour and article.

Ok, you might see the theme now. I am going to be posting beer-as-an-ingredient-recipes like crazy until St. Patty’s. Why the hell not. We should cook with beer more often, the “one for me, one for mixing bowl” concept makes all of us happier chefs.The fact that there is a holiday that started with some kind of vague religious standpoint and has morphed into a 24-hr drink-a-thon seems to provide all the more motivation for this project.

After St. Patty’s I will return to posting cooking with beer recipes like sanely. Maybe.

“Shake up your midweek slump with a free vertical tasting of the always-unconventional Dogfish Head beers, including Squall IPA, Theobroma, Sah’Tea and Chateau Jiahu. NYC rep Elizabeth Lyons will be on hand to answer questions and, as a bonus, each pint comes with a free Dogfish Head glass. Epstein’s Bar, 82 Stanton St. (at Allen St.); 212-477-2232 or epsteinsbarnyc.com”

Questions: What does JiaHu mean? Why the “Chateau” preceding the “JiaHu” ? If the beer is named JiaHu, why is the only Chinese character (portrayed on the woman’s back) Jiu? Did consider naming the beer Chateau Jiu? That would have rhymed nicely.

How do you, as a female working in the beer industry, feel about the label art displayed on these bottles?

Also, when is this Dogfish-hybrid-rooftop-brewery-italian-beer-garden-on-top-of-Eataly going to open up?

Those are some of my sample questions for Ms. Lyons.

brewyork:

Here are the beer-related goings-on after work tonight:

• Another edition of Smart Questions for Stupid People, a trivia night sponsored by BrewYorkNewYork.com and SKI Beer, starts tonight at 8pm at Destination (210 Avenue A, at 13th St., East Village). We’ll be giving away free beer from …

Can’t say that I’m suprised. Sam’s use of ingredients and recipe formulations were cool, but the cool ended there. The show was kind of boring.

tricraftbeer:

As part of the recovery process to replace glycogen stores (ha!) after the 2010 racing season, I’ve been sampling some big, heavy, meal-replacement beers. Bitches Brew, a brainchild of Dogfish Head Brewery and the namesake for the first episode of the new Discovery Channel series Brew Masters is…

It is always fun to let some one else do your work for you. Today’s post has been outsourced to Mr. Chafin - you can read his writings in the New York Press and follow his blog GentlemansTimes on Tumblr for savvy food and drink reviews, witticisms, and other glorious typological enlightenment.  Voila!

***

I was recently in a stark white room, reclining on a couch and a bit soggy from spilling free beer all over my sweater, when more or less out of nowhere owner of Dogfish Head Brewery and host of Discovery’s new beer reality show Brew Masters Sam Calagione stood up on a box and began speaking. Well-built and genuinely enthusiastic about brewing beer, drinking beer, and talking about beer, he only mentioned his brand-new, soon-to-premiere TV show in passing before excitedly moving on to taking audience questions, which he seemed a bit disappointed there weren’t more of. He said he hoped some of his beers would offend us. He called the suddenly-controversial 4Loko “the opposite of a roofie,” not entirely disapprovingly, and spent the next hour bartending and chatting.

The event, at the Levi’s-sponsored space in SoHo, was titled simply “Beer and Stinky Cheese.” It was billed as a tasting of some rare and potent Dogfish Head beers, to be served with a selection of cheeses and chocolates, a sort of beer appreciation party, encouraging the masses (or at least the few dozen people who were able to RSVP) to think of the new crop of flavorful and potent beers being brewed by Dogfish and others more as drinks to be sipped, savored, and paired with an appropriate food than guzzled and forgotten. I’m not sure if Calagione’s appearance was exactly a secret, but it certainly wasn’t being publicized in advance. Forget him, though; this is a beer blog, so let’s talk about beer.

There were four on offer that night: Burton Baton, Fort, the 120-Minute IPA, and the World Wide Stout. I’m a sucker for IPAs, so it shouldn’t really be a surprise that the 120-Minute IPA, billed as “the world’s strongest IPA,” was my hands-down favorite. It’s full-bodied as the best IPA, with a flavor that’s more about jaw tingling than “notes” of anything particular (in my notebook, I scrawled “a mouthful of carbonated mouth pain”). The Burton was also good, a dark beer with as much barely as an IPA has hops, making it less spicy and giving it a rounder, more refreshing flavor. The Fort was my least favorite by far. It’s a raspberry beer (again, “the world’s strongest,” although I wonder how much competition there is on that front). It smelled of cheap vodka and tasted like cough syrup, and was so cloudy that it looked as if someone had poured dirt in it.

As for the stout, well, I don’t exactly remember drinking the stout. Here is where I should mention that all of the beers were 18% ABV (about 3 times as strong as a regular beer), except the Burton Baton, which was “only” 11%. I was at the event for about 2 hours, and about 20 minutes after leaving I found myself standing in the street with my shirt off and yelling at the top of my lungs.

In closing, I would just like to add that Sam Calagione is a very nice man. His show has the same producers as the obscenely watchable Anthony Bourdain vehicle No Reservations, and if watching it is anything like getting plastered on delicious free bottles of $20 beer, then it will be a very, very good show, indeed.

Here we are after the dust has settled from the Beer Bloggers conference – as a novice and a broke-as-a-joke-overeducated-underemployed-twenty-something-New-Yorker – I did not have the pleasure of attending. I did, however, have the pleasure of reading about the aftermath. And I’ve been thinking about it.

Somewhere, the beer industry went from doing a pretty good job to marketing to women – to a good job of objectifying them. Exhibit A below. I want to be the woman pictured in the first ad, and I would like to punch the woman in the second. 

I agree with Ms. Litz that women beer drinkers are not monolithic. Part of my attraction to the craft beer industry is that it is NOT something ‘stereotypically’ girly – it’s more for the flannel types and less for the glitter types. And the point, of said blogger panel, was something along the lines of how to get more women in the craft beer industry. In my opinion, we should not be targeted. We would just like to be included.

So after all of the huffing and puffing –what has changed? Nothing. Brew Masters airs Nov. 20^th , on the Discovery Channel. Yes, the same Channel that brings us Gender Equality in the form of Sarah Palin (I would rather have a beer with a different female politician, personally). And in the name of said equality, I would like to invite you all to play a little drinking game while we watch this series. Each time a Gentleman is speaking – ladies take a sip. And each time a woman is featured (no, serving beer in the background does not count) – fellows take a sip. And let’s see who has more fun playing this game. 

And for a little pre-game action I invite you to try each of these three Dogfish Head beers, for which I have made a musical pairing featuring women. Contemplate the art, and do feel free to share your thoughts.

Theobrama

Sah’tea

Fort