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

Beyond the Bottle: Re-Re-Reopenings

August 20, 2020 by Ken Weaver

Last month, I mentioned how the beer scene was looking out here in Sonoma County, with the particularly troubling sidebar that we could be losing 40+% of the restaurants in Santa Rosa as a result of the pandemic. Santa Rosa’s the biggest city in Sonoma County—home to breweries like Russian River, Moonlight, Cooperage, and HenHouse, among others. With a recent uptick in COVID-19 cases across the state, California closed indoor dining statewide as of July 13^th. The new restrictions, while addressing the fact that indoor transmission is way more problematic, impose a pretty curious handicap on places like breweries, brewpubs, and distilleries—all of which can serve beer outdoors, but only in the same transaction as a meal.

Wineries and tasting rooms, in a move that pokes the most cynical buttons in my brain, have no such restriction. <dramatic villain music>

I’ll focus on how our local folks have been responding. Lagunitas here in Petaluma already had most of its seating outdoors, and is open for curbside pickup and outdoor dining, with the restriction of one household per seating area. Moonlight, Cooperage, and Russian River (the latter getting a boost from Santa Rosa’s decision to shut down 4^th Street in downtown for businesses to operate outdoors) have all been creating makeshift beer gardens, satisfying the meal requirements through either an existing kitchen (RR) or rotating food trucks. And the two HenHouse locations, with smaller outdoor spaces, have been curbside pickup only.

Hope you’re holding up ok through this. How are breweries adjusting to things in your area? Have things reopened, or re-reopened? Get in touch on Twitter via @RareBeerClub.

Beyond the Bottle: Venturing Out

June 26, 2020 by Ken Weaver

It’s tough to imagine having COVID-19 under control in this country anytime soon, so, like everybody else right now, my wife and I have been making adjustments for the long haul. As local restaurants and breweries reopen for on-site business up here in Sonoma County, we’re finally faced with the option of venturing out. For the past few months, we’ve been focused on curbside pickup at the handful of local breweries we really want to have around when this is all over—which seems dire, but probably isn’t. Our biggest city here is Santa Rosa, known to many as home to Russian River Brewing Co., and the hospitality industry is a very big part of life. In a recent CBS article, the CEO of the Santa Rosa Metro Chamber mentioned we’d be lucky to lose only 40% of the city’s restaurants. But he expected most to shut for good.

Deep breath.

The next year is going to be super challenging, even more so for small businesses relying on in-person interactions at the heart of their business model. Things are just now reopening as I’m typing this from Sonoma County, and one of the main things we’re discussing with our friends is how to balance these new options with keeping the folks in our pod (or bubble, or whatever quaranteam term you prefer) safe. Our pod includes our closest friends’ parents, so we’ve been erring on the side of caution. Curbside, delivery, masks, meet for beers outside… But dear god do I want to sit at a bar and drink beer and chat random shit with strangers.

How’s reopening been going in your area? Have you been venturing out to local breweries or restaurants yet? Folks masking up? Get in touch on Twitter via @RareBeerClub.

Beyond the Bottle: Shoutout to the Beer Artists

May 15, 2020 by Ken Weaver

I’m really digging the label art featured on Sudwerk’s Microfauna, created by the brewery’s in-house label artist Gregory Shilling and featuring, I think, a tardigrade (aka ‘moss piglet’) double-fisting some beer cans, surrounded by microbial drinking buddies. It’s super weird, evocative, scientifically questionable… but I think it’s great, and it nails the overall surreal and world-building vibe that permeates so many beer labels and beer artworks these days.

I love this creative space. And, while we’re all bunkered down for the indeterminate future, now seems an ideal time to shout out some of the folks contributing a ton within the space of label design and beer-related artwork. First off, AJ Keirans with @16ozCanvas has been rounding up a bunch of us for podcasts and features, and his archive of podcasts very likely has your favorite artist in there somewhere, going into detail about process, influences, and inspiration. Em Sauter’s been creating daily educational beer drawings and comics over at @pintsandpanels. And Nicolas Fullmer (@beyondtheale) has been sharing his increasingly detailed beer illustrations on the regular—predominantly in his label designs for Monkish.

I’ve missed a ton of folks. In Cali: the labels of HenHouse, Cooperage, and Modern Times all come to mind. Who do you find inspiring in the world of beer art? Whose label artwork do you think deserves some attention? Let us know on Twitter at @RareBeerClub.

Beyond the Bottle: Beer in Quarantine

April 15, 2020 by Ken Weaver

It’s hard to know where the world will be when this newsletter lands, but at the moment my wife and I and our cats have been bunkered down for just over 11 days. We both work from home usually, so we’re focused on worrying about the family we’ve got working through the outbreak (one a pharmacist; another working on a crisis-response team). We’ve been keeping in touch with peeps, via online happy hours and the like… But this is super tough—even for introverts, where this should be our Olympics. We miss our friends and our shared spaces.

Until things go back to anything resembling normal, here’s hoping that you’re staying safe, isolated, virtually connected, and properly stocked. Your favorite small businesses are almost for sure having a terrible time figuring out how they’re going to weather this pandemic, so now’s the best time to support them if you’re able to. The local breweries here in NorCal are offering options like no-contact home deliveries, curbside pickup, and online shops. Merch, gift cards, and employee fundraisers are other great ways to help folks get through this.

How are you making it through the downtime? What beers did you quarantine impulse-buy? Did you find a way to support your local brewery? Connect on Twitter at @RareBeerClub.

Beyond the Bottle: Do You Cellar?

March 15, 2020 by Ken Weaver

A number of beers recently featured in the club have been vintage bottles, picked specifically because they’re drinking at their prime, and it’s had me thinking a lot about cellaring overall lately. I’ll start by saying, despite writing about beer professionally for about a decade, I tend to feel pretty out-there when it comes to discussing beer cellars or beer collections… I have (I checked) literally one bottle of cellared beer right now. It’s in our kitchen cupboard, and I didn’t buy it. Our little wine fridge is focused on younger Pinots and Tablas Creek releases.

This is very much personal preference, and it’s evolved a bit over the years. When we lived in DC and I was trading beer regularly, we at least had a closet full of ageable beer—but that was functionally more of an on-deck circle for the regular tastings our DC crew was hosting. I’ve had some wonderfully aged examples from Hair of the Dog and De Dolle over the years that remind me there’s absolutely positive potential in cellaring beers. But I’ve accepted I just don’t have a taste for oxidation… Nine times out of ten I’m going to prefer that beer fresh.

Same for vintage flights of Pinot. Ditto for aged sherry. Just how these tastebuds are wired.

As such… I’m always curious when people do keep a beer cellar (and not just of IPAs they forgot to drink… you folks know who you are). Where do you fall when it comes to aging beer? Do you keep a cellar? What styles do you like to age? (I’d totally accept a cellar full of lambic…) Have your habits evolved over time? Chime in on Twitter at @RareBeerClub.

Beyond the Bottle: Go-To Glassware

February 15, 2020 by Ken Weaver

Having received a bit of glassware over the holidays, my wife and I recently decided to wade through and reorganize our glass collection. (Most alcohol writers have more glassware than we know what to do with…) We’ve got three spots for glassware in the house: main section in the kitchen, a few windowed shelves in the living room (for wine glasses and snifters, so I can offset having to walk by how fancy I feel), and, thirdly, a nook for backup glassware. We did our best to Marie Kondo it up, trying to be mindful of what actually sparked joy to use.

Some stuff quickly got banished to the backup nook: hefeweizen glasses, the Spiegelau wheat beer glasses (both the shape and size of a rocket ship)… The more interesting part was what made it into the prime kitchen shelves. What was our go-to glassware we used all the time?

Here’s what those two shelves look like for us: A few thin, heavy-bottomed pilsner glasses. Two sets of glassware I designed for the comic—flexible, medium-sized wine goblets, both stemmed and stemless. A few wee and normal-sized nonics. And then the two things that I personally like drinking out of most, for different reasons. The first’s for pragmatic ones: a pair of Riedel Ouverture beer glasses, tulip-like and a perfect combo of nicely thin but thick enough that I haven’t broken them yet. The second are two small chalice glasses from Dieu du Ciel! in Montreal, for more personal reasons. Ali and I snagged these up at the brewery’s 10^th anniversary party back in 2008, when we were roadtripping to the west coast. They’re a little frou-frou and fragile—but they also hit the joy button and we should use them more.

What’s your go-to piece of beer glassware? Do you tend to reach for it because of functional or personal reasons? Are you glassware ambivalent? Chime in on Twitter at @RareBeerClub.

Beyond the Bottle: Old Ales

January 15, 2020 by Ken Weaver

One of the two featured beers this month is Lost Abbey’s Righteous Son, a barrel-aged old ale made exclusively for The Rare Beer Club. Old ales are a dark and maltier subset of beers tracing their origins back to England, and they typically emphasize a generosity of notes like caramel, toffee, nuttiness, and/or molasses (even a bit of roast)—essentially hitting some of the same malt spectrum as barleywine, though without the same intensity of hops or alcohol impact. The Rare Beer Club’s founder Michael Jackson wrote old ales “should be a warming beer of the type that is best drunk in half pints by a warm fire on a cold winter’s night.”

While the above provides a basic sense of expectation for beers labeled as “old ale” today—higher in alcohol, darker malts, modest hops, often some sherry-like oxidative notes—there’s a lot more nuance to what “old ale” referred to historically. Martyn Cornell’s article “So what is the difference between Barley Wine and Old Ale?” is a great resource for any deeper dive.

If you’re digging Lost Abbey’s Righteous Son (or old ales in general), tracking more of these down can sometimes be a bit of a hunt. English examples making it stateside are pretty few and far between, while many of the old-ale examples made stateside are more barley wine-y. Great Divide’s longstanding winter seasonal Hibernation Ale (brewed annually since 1995) is one promising option that’s easier to track down, and North Coast’s potent Old Stock Ale is made year round. Got old-ale recommendations? Hit us up on Twitter via @RareBeerClub.