Kasper On Tap: Dark beer for dark times: Snow-Capping for Seattle game - Baltimore Sun columnist Rob Kasper blogs about beer

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December 21, 2007

Dark beer for dark times: Snow-Capping for Seattle game

In the dim days of December I crave a dark full-bodied beer. One that will give me some solace as I watch ---I can’t help myself---our Ravens play football.

By now lesser fans would have stopped watching or stopped drinking beer, but not this boy. This weekend, in readiness for the Ravens-Seahawks contest, I downed a bottle of Pyramid Snow Cap brewed in Seattle.

This winter seasonal is gorgeous, a mahogany beauty. Rich and malty with a subtle spicy finish. Nice stuff, smooth for 7 percent alcohol by volume.

Seattle is a dark town, with lots of cloud cover, and they do dark well; even their coffee is darker than in the rest of the country. The spinning Snow Cap bottle predicted a gloomy day for the Ravens.

Snow Cap is my favorite Pyramid brew. Any other nominees?

Is it just me, or does any one else associate dark beer with the Left Coast?

Posted by Rob Kasper at 11:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Comments

Some of my favorite Domestic Darks but by no means anywhere close to a definitive list:

East Coast:
Yuengling Porter
Sam Adams Dark Lager
Sam Adams Holiday Porter
Sam Adams Chocolate Bock
Clipper City Peg Leg Stout

Mid-Coast:
Bell's Java Stout
Bell's Double Cream Stout
Bell's expedition Stout

Left Coast:
Alaskan Smoked Porter
Anchor Porter
Rogue Mocha Porter
Rogue Shakespeare Stout
North Coast Old Rasputin Imperial St.

Posted by: Mark | December 21, 2007 1:25 PM

Pyramid has a brew pub that is across the street from the stadium in Seattle. The food is great, but the draft pale ale, a nitrogen driven creation is tremendous.

Posted by: mike | December 27, 2007 12:27 PM

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About Rob Kasper

Rob Kasper, a features columnist, has been writing about beer for 20 years, and he remembers when Anchor Christmas and Noche Buena were about the only beers at a holiday tasting and Sisson’s was the only brewpub in Baltimore. A collection of his columns, "Raising Kids and Tomatoes, Amusing Tales and Appetizing Recipes," was published in 1998. He lives with his wife, Judith, a professor at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, in a downtown Baltimore rowhouse. They have two grown sons, who come home from time to time and drink their father’s beer.
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