As Grant and other correspondents have  warned, Dogfish's Festina Peche is one sour brew.

I had one the other night while watching the Os beat the Yankees. The result of the baseball game was sweet, but not the beverage.

The folks from Dogfish tell us that in the brewing process the "natural peach sugars are eaten by the yeast." I would say the sugars are "stomped" by the yeast.

I don't know if this beer is true to the Berliner Weisse tradition, but it does make you pucker.

An appetizer beer, not a late-night delight. Agree?

Anybody wild about this brew?

Posted by Rob Kasper at 3:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)
        

Fellow beer drinker Kelby Brick sends word of a happy encounter with Wells Banana Bread Beer.

 "Rob, last month I got a Wells Banana Bread Beer. I was a bit leery of this. Late last night I decided to relax and turn on the TV for a bit and try this beer. Fabulous late night beer! Really did smell and taste like banana bread (strange, I know) and really pleasant. Hit absolutely the right note—late at night—when one is not sure if one wants something sweet or salty.

"This beer is somewhat sweet but beery—but nothing like those junk sweet liquors. I wouldn’t recommend it for daytime or with meals. But when you want to sit back and drink a pint but (are) also in the mood for dessert."

Thanks, Kelby. Anyone else try this banana bread beer?

I think there might be a whole category of late-night beers.

I have a peach beer from Dogfish that I plan to sample long after the sun goes down.

Any other late-nighters?

Posted by Rob Kasper at 11:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)
        

The July/August issue of Draft magazine offered up pairings of beers with sandwiches.

Peanut butter and jelly with -- are you ready for this? -- Sierra Nevada Porter.

Philly cheesteak with Avery India Pale Ale or Dogfish 60 Minute IPA.

Turkey Club with Anchor Steam.

Meatball sandwich with Saison Dupont and grilled cheese with Trumer Pils or Pilsner Urquell.

What do you think of these matchups?

I have trouble getting my head around the idea of drinking any beer with peanut butter and jelly.

But a beer with soft crab sandwich, topped with a slice of Maryland tomato -- that is a great marriage. I prefer a Pils, either Victory's Prima Pils or Clipper City's Uber Pils, with those dangling crab legs.

What is your favorite beer with a "soft"  sandwich?

Posted by Rob Kasper at 11:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)
        

I was disappointed with the beer selection this year at Artscape. All I saw at the beer stands was Coors, Killian and Blue Moon.

Artscape is supposed to be a celebration of local arts and crafts, but this year the craft of making good local beer seems to have been overlooked.

In previous Artscapes, local beers from Clipper City, and back a few more years, DeGroens, were served at the festival.

Yesterday I paid $6 for a cup of very foamy (those ice chests that are supposed to cool draft beer never work in the heat) and tepid Blue Moon. I bought it at a stand set up in the UB parking lot on Charles Street and walked with it up Mt. Royal Ave. By the time I reached the Mt. Royal Tavern, I had given up on this brew. I tossed a cup of beer, 3/4 full, in the trash. That for me is a rarity, an insult, if you will, to art of brewing.

Anyone bummed by the Artscape beer selection?

Did I miss something? 

Posted by Rob Kasper at 1:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)
        

Read an interesting feature story in The New York Times yesterday saying that some of the beer drinkers in Breezy Point, an Irish-American neighborhood in Queens known for its extreme fondness for Budweiser (supposedly its zip code has the nation's highest per-capita sales) are not sure they will stick with Bud now that InBev, the Belgian brewer, is taking over.

Anybody hear that sentiment in Baltimore bars?

Budweiser and the Busch family seem pretty rooted in the red, white and blue to me.

But there is no denying that with the Busch family getting only two seats on the new board, the Belgians rule.

Did anybody feel dissed when Miller was taken over by South African Breweries?

What matters more to you -- who owns the brewery, or what is in the bottle?

Posted by Rob Kasper at 2:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (13)
        

The July/August issue of Draft, a slick, well-put together magazine that is published in Phoenix, Ariz., lists Camden Yards as one of the nation's top 10 ball parks.

Others on the list are, in order, Fenway, Wrigley, PNC, Yankee Stadium, Nationals Park, Minute Maid, Safeco, Coors and Comerica.

Draft does not recommend beers to drink at these parks. For Camden Yards, I like the Stella Artois in the Bud Lite Warehouse and Wild Goose India Pale Ale from the microbrew stands.

When I visited Nationals Park earlier this year, I had a Home Run Ale on draft, which I learned is is brewed by Jacob Leinenkugel in Wisconsin.

Any other suggested brews for these or other parks? Iron City in PNC? Brooklyn in Yankee Stadium? Are these available, or is all the beer Bud, Coors and Miller?

I am surprised Philadelphia did not make the list. Anybody been to that park. If so, what did you sip?

Posted by Rob Kasper at 1:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)
        

I had an impure beer last night, a Grut Bier from Germany. This is a real old-style beer, brewed the way beers were before the German purity laws went into effect in 1516.

Before purity, brewers all over the world made beer with what they had on hand. This modern reworking of the recipe includes a lot of spices. Are you ready for bay leaf in your beer? Howsabout ginger, rosemary and wild hops? Grut Bier is part of the Dr. Fritz Briem Historic Signature Series brewed by Bayerische Staatsbrauerei Weihenstephan.There is short, well-written,   dissertation on the label recounting brewing history.

What does it taste like? Well, lots of spice (not my favorite ), but this brew was surprisingly  refreshing. The straw color -- very close to pale green -- put me off. But the citrus, somewhat lemon-like finish was delightful. I could drink one, but after that it was back to purity.

Grut Bier is distributed in the Baltimore area by Legends. I found it at the Wine Source in Hampden, and Joe Falcone at Wells Discount Liquors on York Road says he has it. A large ( 1 pint 9 ounce bottle) runs $6-$7.

Anybody else try this?

Could you get past the greenish glow?

Did it make you pro-purity, or can you tolerate some impurity?

Posted by Rob Kasper at 2:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

You know you are on vacation when you drink your lunch, with your wife. I did that last week on the final day I was in Oregon.

My wife and I and our friend Janie Hibler, walked from Janie's home to Bridgeport Brewing brewpub and bakery on Marshall Street in Northwest Portland. I had the $7 sampler: nine small glasses of their nine ales. My wife and Janie shared another sampler. We picked our top three favorites.

The ladies liked beers with low IBUs, international bitterness units. Their favorite was the Beertown Brown -- roasted caramel and chocolate malts, lightly hopped, with an IBU of 20. Their second favorite was Ropewalk Amber Ale, a brew that also used caramel malt and had an IBU of 18. They split on their third favorite. Janie preferred the Blue Heron Pale Ale, with an IBU of 25. My wife picked the Black Strap Stout, with an IBU of 30.

I liked the Extra Special Bitter (30 IBU), the Blue Heron Ale, and the India Pale Ale that packed a whopping 50 IBUs. I am a bitter guy.

We did eat. The smoked duck and green chili quesadilla salad was our favorite dish. At the bakery I bought a loaf of bread that used spent grain, left over from the brewing. Pretty good, especially toasted.

I know that the IBU or bitterness of a beer is somewhat offset by the amount of malt in the brew. Yet I told the ladies that looking at a beer's IBU is a pretty good way to judge its bitterness.

Agree or disagree?

Also what do we think of samplers? For lunch? Anyone else bake beer bread with spent grain?

Posted by Rob Kasper at 12:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

I was sitting in the Portland airport Tuesday, putting my clothes back on after going through security, when a paid advertising supplement fell out of my copy of The Oregonian, Portland's daily newspaper. That was how I learned that July was Oregon craft beer month, and that the beer drinking community there had planned a bucket load of activities, including one called puckerfest, a celebration of sour beers.

I wanted to cash in my airplane ticket and spend the month there, but duty and the mortgage called me home.

On the plane ride back to Baltimore I read several articles in the 20-page tabloid supplement devoted to Oregon craft beer. It was surprisingly well-written. An article written by Lisa Morrison, whom I learned later is known as the beer goddess, talked about three trends in Oregon brewing --- Belgians, barrel-aging and blending. It seems Oregon brewers are experimenting with Belgian-style beers because they have gone about as far as they can go experimenting with hops. "We have reached the ceiling on the hops arm race," Cascade brewmaster Ron Gansberg told Morrison. "People are looking for an intense sensory experience other than hops," he said.

On another front, so many Oregon brewers are trying to barrel-age their beers that wooden barrels are hard to come by, Morrison reported. Finally, once these beers come out of the barrels, an increasing number of them, Morrison wrote, are being blended with other beers -- some from barrrels, some from stainless steel tanks.

For example, Morrison said that the Abyss imperial stout made by Deschutes is a blend of beer aged in a bourbon barrel, and a portion of the same beer is fermented in stainless steel tanks.

It seems to me that back here on the East Coast we have had plenty of the first B -- brewing Belgians -- but not too much of the other Bs. I know Dogfish does age some beers in wood barrels. Any others come to mind?

Hows about blending? Do we do that here?

By the way, if you have good timing, and are going to Oregon in July, here are some details on the beer festivities.

Posted by Rob Kasper at 5:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)