Past Newsletters

Vol. 3 No. 4

Brewery	Beers Featured
Stone Mountain Brewing Company	Stone Mountain Lager
Thomas Kemper Brewing Company	White Beer

Stone Mountain Brewing Company

The Stone Mountain Brewing Co. derives its name from Georgia's Stone Mountain State Park, a former battlefield and now Civil War memorial rich in Southern heritage. Brewmaster and President, Claude Smith, has a BS in Chemistry and like many brewmasters, has his roots as a homebrewer and has been brewing for over ten years now. In a two year effort to develop an American-produced German style lager with a smooth finish and clean after-taste, Claude brewed over one hundred test batches before homing in on a recipe that met his expectations. Always popular with friends and family during the development phase of a new product, the byproduct being 500 gallons of homebrew, each slightly improved upon from the last, Smith plans to introduce a stout and dark lager before the end of the year.

For more information about the brewery and scheduled tours, call (408) 988-7106.

Stone Mountain Lager

Serving Temperature: 37-42° F
Original Gravity: 13.0° Plato
Final Gravity: N/A
Int'l Bittering Units: 10.0
Alcohol by Volume: 4.6%

Stone Mountain Lager is a medium-bodied German lager brewed with a combination of klages and capapils malts. Stone Mountain is bittered with Galena and Hallertauer hops while Smith uses Tettnanger hops to give the beer its slightly fruity aroma. This smooth, refreshing lager is brewed with a proprietary yeast strain during a 90 minute boil.

Notes From the Panel:

Low in esters and with some hop spiciness evident, this clean lager has a very nice nose overall. Look for good head retention in this medium-to-light-bodied, clear, pale colored beer. We picked up a slightly sweet, pale malt start which carries over to the middle and a dry, very smooth finish which indicates that it has been well-lagered. Stone Mountain's flavor profile has a low hop bitterness. Overall, a well balanced, exceptionally smooth and crisp lager.

Thomas Kemper Brewing Company

Founded in 1985 by Andy Thomas and Will Kemper, The Thomas Kemper Brewing Co. was one of the country's earliest specialty brewers. Located across Puget Sound from Seattle, WA, the brewery adopted a bold strategy early on by choosing to brew authentic German lagers and Bavarian wheat beers in a region typically dominated by ale breweries. Brewmaster Rande Reed is at the heart and soul of Kemper's product line. Traveling from his home in Milwaukee, WI to Europe in 1979 sparked the interest in brewing that all but obsesses Reed today. With only a limited background in wine making and little documented literature at the time on brewing, he sought out information and advice from brewers themselves and by 1982 was considered to be an authority on home brewing as he began speaking at conferences around the country. Reed was hired in 1989 to help the brewery in improving and maintaining their inconsistent product line. He is now considered to be a significant authority within the industry, respected widely amongst his peers for his innovative and high quality products.

For more information about the brewery and scheduled tours, call (206) 682-8322 or check out their web site at www.thomaskemper.com.

White Beer

Serving Temperature: 47-52° F
Original Gravity: 12.0° Plato
Final Gravity: N/A
Int'l Bittering Units: 13.0
Alcohol by Volume: 4.4%

Brewed in the classic Belgian Witbier tradition, Thomas Kemper White is an unfiltered ale spiced with coriander seed and dried Curacao orange peel, as well as a third proprietary spice. As a side note, the beer we've sent you this month is the brewery's first-ever ale and consistent with their existing product line, it's a winner as evidenced by taking the Silver at the 1995 Great American Beer Festival in the Belgian Specialty Ales category. Rande uses a combination of two-row pale and wheat malts, coupled with unmalted wheat and rolled oats to brew their interpretation of a Belgian Witbier. Liberty hops are the only hops used to brew Kemper White and they are used primarily to add bitterness. Kemper uses a proprietary Belgian Witbier yeast strain.

Notes From the Panel:

We can't praise the brewery enough for producing such an excellent example of a style that is very difficult to brew. Immediately note the coriander and orange citrus in this clean, prominent nose. Color is pale, slightly cloudy (bottle conditioned) which is appropriate to style. Look for a complex, delicate flavor profile in this beer, one that's spicy, citrusy, and fruity. Also note an extremely dry finish in this medium-bodied Wit. Overall, a superb effort at a Belgian Wit and although it's not Belgian, we'd enthusiastically sample it again just to make sure we got it right for Microbrewed Beer of the Month Club!

Ask Murl

Dear Murl,

I was kickin' back in my favorite blues bar, the New Dolphin Inn, last weekend and decided to venture out and try one of several malt liquors that were on hand behind the bar. Several things followed my consumption of a couple of tall boys: I found rhythm and became a dancing machine, my dance partners looked considerably better than they had only hours before, and I woke the next morning (or perhaps early afternoon) feeling as though I'd been beaten up side the head repeatedly with a large, blunt instrument. My question is a simple one. What the hell is a "malt liquor"? Is it different from beer and why don't I ever want to have one again?

Steve Carson
San Juan Capistrano,
CA.

Yo Steve-O!

Good question. There seems to be much confusion with respect to the difference between a malt liquors and malt beverages. To answer your question, I've got to first let you know that the phrase, "malt liquor" is really just another marketing tool used to describe a category of beers that could be described as "fortified Bud". All malt liquors are also malt beverages. In many states, any malted beverage above 4 % alcohol by volume cannot be labeled as "Beer". As what has become to be known as "malt liquor" is not really a stout, porter, ale, or any of the other style descriptors that could be used instead of the word "beer", the phrase malt liquor was developed. Your basic Cobra Malt Liquors and Old English 800s of the world are brewed with more fermentables such as sugars and adjunct grains like rice and corn. Bottom line? Cheaply produced, high octane rocket fuel that would serve you equally as effective and perhaps more kindly the next morning as a rust remover rather than a social lubricant. Bit of trivia on the two above mentioned products: Old English originally got its name as it used to contain 8 % alcohol by volume. Cobra got its name after product research uncovered excessive consumption of the product to serve as an effective repellent towards the obviously highly intelligent reptile.

Woof!
Murl.

Food For Thought...

Stone Mountain Trout

Whether grilled, broiled, steamed or fried, whitefish is a natural match for crisp, clean lagers of either the Bohemian or German variety. The crispness of the beer, combined with whatever delicacies each individual beer may offer, will provide the perfect complement to the delicate, melt-in-your-mouth qualities of a beautifully cooked fish. Although you should use a lager in the recipe itself, consider serving the meal with a Pilsener, an ale, or this month's featured lager.

• 3 fresh trout
• 1 cup Stone Mountain Lager
• 1 cup dry white wine
• ½ cup vinegar
• 1 lemon, half in slices

Wash and clean trout, place in saucepan. Mix beer, wine, vinegar and pour over fish in saucepan. Heat mixture to boil, turn down heat and simmer 10-15 minutes, turning fish over. Remove fish, squeeze lemon over fish, garnish with lemon slices and parsley. Serves 3 persons, 2 persons and 3 cats, 2 persons and one cat with an overactive pituitary gland, or one dog.

Source: Great Cooking with Beer, Jack Erickson, Red Brick Press, 1989.

Norm's Corner...
As spoken by Cheers' Norm

Coach: How's a beer sound, Normie?
Norm: I dunno. I usually finish them before they get a word in.

True Brew Facts

JUiCE MAGAZINE - After consuming stale bread and dough, 3 Vermont cows died of alcohol poisoning. Investigators believe unbaked dough yeasts reacted with the partially digested material in the cow's stomachs to produce alcohol. Rumor has it that the Pabst Brewing Co. is investigating the viability of this previously uncharted brewing technique with plans to market it as "Pabst Blue Bovine: The Brew that makes you Moo."

SECRET LIFE OF BEER - Among the forest tribes of Latin America the practice of exocannibalism, or the eating of one's enemies, was commonly combined with brewing and drinking beer. Legend has it that you couldn't beat the taste of human fingers with a cool skull cup of chicha beer. The Putumayo River tribes ate captives only after an eight-day beer festival where the prisoners, soon to be consumed, were kept drunk until meal time. (next sentence in italics) These guys take the phrase, "marinating your liver" to an entirely new level!

BEER TRIVIA - The concept of the 6-pack was developed over the 4, 8 or 10-pack in the 1930's when major brewing companies determined that six bottles of beer was the maximum number that a woman could carry home from the market at one time.

Cooking with Beer
By Jay Harlow

One of the most basic roles of beer, at the table or apart from it, is simple refreshment -"wetting the whistle." Because beer is about 95% water, most of what it does is satisfy thirst. The complex of ingredients that makes up the other five percent makes all the difference in how a given beer goes with given foods. There are many reasons why certain foods taste good with beer, and why certain combinations taste better than others. When analyzing why a particular dish or a particular combination of foods (including beverages) works, I always come back to the balancing Five Flavors identified by the Chinese thousands of years ago: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and hot (pungent). Not every dish needs to contain every element, but when one of these flavors completely dominates a meal, or is missing altogether, the overall balance suffers. In the five-flavor formula, beer mostly offers bitterness and sweetness; occasionally it adds acidity. Just how bitter and how sweet a given beer is determines its food affinities. When it comes down to matching beer and food, grouping beers by their overall flavor makes more sense than categorizing them a lager or ale, or by color, or along national boundaries.

One aspect of the flavor of beer is actually tactile rather than pure taste. The bitter astringency of hops, like tannin in red wines, is a perfect way to cut through the effect of fats on the palate. Without such a foil, rich foods such as beef, pork, duck, or cheese would quickly become heavy. A sip of a well-hopped ale or lager rinses away the fatty film and sets up the taste buds for more.

Texture can be as important as flavor in choosing foods to accompany your favorite beer. Let's face it, beer by itself doesn't offer much in the way of texture (apart from the thickest Stouts, which are almost chewy in their mouth-filling qualities.) A beer needs something firmer to go with it, whether it's the crunch of chips or pickles, the chewy texture of home-baked pretzels or crusty bread, or the crackle of fried shellfish or vegetables. Imagine having a just a bowl of creamy soup with your beer; it doesn't quite make it. But leave some of the vegetables in large, firm pieces, or better yet add some crisp croutons or crackers, and it works. Don't, however, make the mistake of assuming that beer belongs in every dish, or that more is necessarily better. What it all boils down to (pun intended) is that cooking with beer concentrates its natural flavors. As the water and alcohol evaporate, most of the other flavors remain, so a sweet beer becomes sweeter and a tart or bitter beer becomes more so.

Bitterness is the element to watch most carefully. Perhaps it would help to think of beer as a liquid extract of a distinctively flavored herb (hops) that has a strong bitter dimension. Use it with discretion as you would use other assertive herbs. This is not to say that highly hopped beers have no place in the kitchen. Guinness Extra Stout is no slouch in the bitterness department, but dark-roasted malt gives it a balancing richness that carries through cooking. Keep sweetness in mind as well. A beer that is noticeably sweet in the glass will become more so when cooked, and is probably best used in desserts.

When beer is going to be an integral part of at finished sauce, be sure to allow enough time for the flavors to blend. Stews, soups, and other long-cooked dishes made with beer work better than quick sauces make by deglazing a skillet. Often a more important question than how to integrate beer into a given dish is whether to use beer in it at all. There is no reason to assume that every dish that goes with beer should include beer as an ingredient. Ask yourself if a slight to pronounced malty flavor would improve the dish, and if the accompanying touch of bitterness and/or sweetness would work with the existing balance of flavors. If not, don't waste good beer - drink it instead!

About the Author: Jay Harlow, a former restaurant chef, is a popular cooking teacher and food writer living in the San Francisco Bay Area. The recipe featured in this month's newsletter was taken from his 9th cookbook, Beer Cuisine, A Cookbook for Beer Lovers.

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The Fine Print: Members giving gift memberships do not qualify for referral credits and you can't give yourself a gift to qualify! This Program is mutually exclusive of any other promotions.

Membership Q & A

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