Ken Weaver, Author at Craft Beer Blog from The Beer of the Month Club

Beyond the Bottle: Nelson Sauvin Hops

January 25, 2019 by Ken Weaver

Anchorage Brewing Co.’s Nelson Sauvin, one of the two Rare Beer Club featured beers this month, is brewed with 100% Nelson Sauvin hops—a particularly forward variety originating from New Zealand’s Plant & Food Research back in 2000. The variety comes from the New Zealand “Smooth Cone” hop, itself an offspring of old-school California Cluster.

Characteristics of Nelson Sauvin hops emphasize a focus on “fresh crushed gooseberries” (a common descriptor for New Zealand’s Sauvignon Blanc). The hops also can include tropical character along the lines of lychee, passion fruit, lime, mango… Nelson Sauvin was one of the major early impact hops, and it can bring exceptional potency and zest into a beer.

If you’re digging the Anchorage Nelson Sauvin, where its pungent qualities are set alongside the impact of Brettanomyces, there are at least a couple other examples highlighting these hops (with greater availability). Alpine Beer Co.’s Nelson IPA is one of the key options with larger distribution, while 8Wired’s HopWired IPA is packed with Nelson Sauvin alongside various other New Zealand varieties. Mikkeller’s also featured a variety of Nelson-Sauvin-y releases.

Have a local New Zealand-hop beer you’ve been digging? Something like Motueka more your thing? Let us know what’s been hitting the spot on Twitter at @RareBeerClub.

Beyond the Bottle: Seasonal Fixtures

December 15, 2018 by Ken Weaver

Not that we could use any comfort, but the semi-solid firmament of winter seasonals can be pretty reassuring. Over the course of a year, there aren’t too many seasonal beer releases that I still keep up with, which I think makes me busy and normal. With so many signals firing in beer and beyond, I’m just not getting into seasonal habits as often as I used to. My wife and I got into snagging around February each year—back when we lived on the east coast within distribution range. Victory’s Summer Love, a golden ale that’s right up there with Firestone Walker’s 805 for us, remains a summertime staple. And we typically snag Sierra Nevada’s annual Oktoberfest collabs. Beyond that… it’s mostly winter seasonals.

Between picking out things to share with family over the holidays and/or just having things to look forward to as we head into drearier months (though appreciating the rain in NorCal at the moment), one tends to make deeper attachments to end-of-year seasonals. We picked up a case of Sierra Nevada Celebration as soon as it hit shelves, as we do. Ditto for a sixpack of Anchor’s annually tweaked Christmas ale. Going forward, any seasonal habits we pick up will probably be at our go-to breweries here in Sonoma County. Have you been keeping up with seasonals the way you used to? Which winter releases are you still looking forward to each year? Let us know what’s been hitting the spot over on Twitter via @RareBeerClub.

Beyond the Bottle: Enjoy It While It Lasts

November 16, 2018 by Ken Weaver

All About Beer Magazine had been one of the leading beer publications in the country for 39-ish years. While I wouldn’t be surprised if the brand re-emerged in a different form, you can read more about what’s been going down over at Jeff Alworth’s Beervana blog—“After 39 Years, All About Beer Magazine is Dead”—or via the Forbes article “RIP All About Beer.”

It’s been a weird couple years.

I was one of the last folks to depart the All About Beer editorial team, though I kept doing my Trending column over there through the magazine’s final printed issues. That editorial team, led by John Holl and then Daniel Hartis up until the end, was the most supportive group of beer writers and editors I could’ve asked for. Managing editor Jon Page and our designer Jeff Quinn helped steer the mag to what I’m inclined to believe were some of its brightest years. And Hartis and I had some awesome theme issues planned that never saw the light of day.

For those of you who read the mag—thank you for supporting independent beer journalism. If you’re looking for something else to read, Holl’s an editor at Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine these days. I’ve got my first piece for the revamped BeerAdvocate Magazine in their latest issue. Support those publications that serve you well. They’re not going to be around forever.

Beyond the Bottle: Great American Beer Fest Notes

October 10, 2018 by Ken Weaver

Knocking out this latest column right after getting back from Denver. It was my fourth year judging out at the Great American Beer Festival, and it’s one of the parts of my involvement in the industry that’s particularly rewarding each year. Three days, and up to six flights a day, of beers across varying styles and executions, judged blind with some of the more thoughtful and experienced palates in the beer world. This year we were 298 judges across 12 countries, sensorily combing through approximately 8,650 beers entered by 2,400 American breweries.

Also: 391 entries in the new hazy/juicy IPA category. Which gives you a sense of tone.

Some clips from the highlights reel: The competition is in the process of transitioning fully to an eJudging platform, so I got to knock out some of my first-round notes with a tablet—which I think is guaranteed to streamline the process and clarity of notes going forward, and they’re rolling it out carefully. During the sessions of the beer festival itself: it was interesting to see lines snaking away from hazy-focused spots like Weldwerks and Great Notion, where that fanfare hadn’t quite crested a few years ago when we’d first seen them. Weldwerks’ end-corner booth had a dedicated side for brewers and judges; even that tended to have a line. I chatted with a few folks about what it means to have a competition with an increasingly less familiar set of names winning awards as the industry expands, and if that’s cause for concern. As expected: Certainly saw a number of Brut IPAs at the fest. On the Rare Beer Club front: shout out to The Bruery for taking a bronze for Mischief—their 10^th GABF medal to date.

Beyond the Bottle: More on Gotlandsdricka

September 28, 2018 by Ken Weaver

One of the two featured RBC beers this month is styled as a Gotlandsdricka, a particularly out-there style from Sweden one doesn’t see very often. It had me thinking of Finnish sahti, which shares the use of juniper, among other key details. Randy Mosher’s Radical Brewing and Svante Ekelin’s entry in The Oxford Companion To Beer are both good spots to start digging in.

The featured beer from Rowley Farmhouse Ales overcomes two of the main challenges in brewing authentically minded Gotlandsdricka: they foraged boughs of juniper from around their local Sante Fe region (these traditionally get preboiled and/or used to make a filtering base during lautering), and they acquired birch-smoked malt through a friend who happens to do things like that in the Jemez wilderness, outside of Sante Fe. That addition of a birch-smoked malt provides, as Mosher puts it, “a faint wintergreen tang.” He includes a recipe for Gotlandsdricka that includes traditional adds like bog bean, blessed thistle, and bog myrtle.

These beers have a lot going on. The only example I can recall trying off the top of my head was the Jester King Gotlandsdricka, many many years ago. Närke Kulturbryggeri makes one of the other examples that sees any significant availability. Jopen in the Netherlands and Off Color in Chicago both have their own versions. Though Mosher and others mentioned that Gotlandsdricka was very possibly the everyday drink of the Vikings (mead was reserved for fancier occasions), they’d have a tough time finding a steady supply of it today.