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

Beyond the Bottle: Foeder Feeders (& Filip)

March 14, 2018 by Ken Weaver

I recently got to check out Almanac Beer Co.’s new facility in Alameda, California, which I was checking out on assigment for ABV Magazine. The brand-new Barrel House, Brewery and Taproom (the building itself dates back to World War II…) marks a major shift for the folks at Almanac, who up until now relied on contract or partner brewing to get their beers out into the world. Check out the full coverage and photos in ABV, but suffice to say that Almanac has committed to the sour game. Asking co-founder Jesse Friedman what he was most excited about with the new spot, he replied, “I’m excited to get these foeders filled.”

Foeders, the big barrels often used for aging sour beers, aren’t a thing you, like, impulse buy. Wood & Beer: A Brewer’s Guide by Dick Cantwell and Peter Bouckaert is the best resource I’ve seen for foeder specifics, and the two authors put the general size for these barrels about 600 liters or more (with significant wiggle room, but this is around the size where the production methods change and the barrels go from assembly-line to custom). The smallest foeder sold currently by Foeder Crafters of America is just a little bit larger than that, at seven barrels, or 14 kegs’ worth. For a sense of the size of some of the larger foeders, though, there’s a useful anecdote in Wood & Beer about a broken ladder and a temporarily lost employee named Filip.

Have you gotten to check out any other recent foeder-aged beers? Rodenbach, New Glarus, New Belgium, Side Project, Bruery Terreux and numerous others have been making foeders part of their sour-beer operations, and, at the very least, you’re unlikely to find many foeder-aged beers that breweries are doing just for a hoot. (I tend to read it as ‘probably not a kettle sour’.) Any foeder beers hitting the spot? Join the conversation on Twitter @rarebeerclub.

Beyond the Bottle: As Old As Osborne

February 16, 2018 by Ken Weaver

The glossary of Martyn Cornell’s authoritative Amber Gold & Black is kind, especially for this particular reader, in its clear definition of old ale. Cornell puts it as follows: “a name given to any strong aged pale or brown beer.” Things vary, as they tend to. What constituted old ale often depended on one’s time and location, and Cornell unpacks some relations between old ales and other historical strong groups—Burton ales, stock ales, etc.—in the chapter “Barley Wine and Old Ale.” The chapter also highlights a scene from the book Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell, wherein a certain Squire Hamley offers his visiting physician a glass of old ale, from a cask that he had been cellaring since the birth of his first son, Osborne.

“You must have a glass full,” he says. “It’s old ale, such as we don’t brew now-a-days. It’s as old as Osborne. We brewed it that autumn and we called it the young Squire’s ale.”

It’s worth noting Osborne was over 21 at this time, and that the physician “had to sip it very carefully as he ate his cold roast beef” due to the aged beer’s potency. It’s interesting to think just how long we have been able to create beers that can last for decades… At RateBeer.com, the old-ale style descriptions (presumably still overseen by the well-traveled Josh Oakes) note there are at least three or four styles coalescing under the ‘old ale’ umbrella. But I particularly dig the last sentence, which reflects my own skewed experience stateside: “For me, these are robustly malty beers, akin to a top-fermented version of a dopplebock.” And they often are.

Have you gotten to check out any old-ale releases? AleSmith, Kuhnhenn, The Bruery, North Coast and Harviestoun are all reliable spots to check for cellarable examples. Any hitting the spot? Sampled a beer as old as Osborne? Join the conversation on Twitter @RareBeerClub.

Beyond the Bottle: The Unfamiliar Space of Bière Brut

January 17, 2018 by Ken Weaver

I swung by the Calicraft booth at the most recent Great American Beer Festival to catch up, knowing Reserve Series Rosé was on the Rare Beer Club schedule later in the year. Calicraft opened in the East Bay back in 2012, such that we just missed including them in our release of The Northern California Craft Beer Guide, which came out the same year. My earliest coverage of these folks focused on their flagship ‘sparkling ale’ as part of a roundup of bières brut and their related brethren in RateBeer Weekly. Calicraft’s dry, crisp sparkling ale (Buzzerkeley) uses Champagne yeast and robust carbonation in a way similar to Deus and the various Malheurs of this sort—the Champagne-like beers that Michael Jackson, in a slim chapter in Great Beers of Belgium, referred to as bières brut (carefully tuned to avoid the Champagne region’s wrath).

I’d like to tell you the world’s now awash in these creamy, effervescent, Champagne-inspired beers. But Calicraft’s remained one of the main U.S. players working with Champagne yeast, both in this month’s featured Reserve Series Rosé as well as throughout the brewery’s Barrel Project series and beyond, continuing their focus on wine yeasts. Malheurs and Deus remain two reliable go-tos for formal bière brut. And a handful of other brewers are finding success, too, including New Zealand’s Garage Project with Hops On Pointe, a “Champagne Pilsner”.

Have you tried a Champagne-inspired beer before? Is your local doing a bière brut or some sort of sparkling ale worth checking out? Join the conversation on Twitter @rarebeerclub.

Beyond the Bottle: The Sum of its Parts

December 19, 2017 by Ken Weaver

The barrel-aged, blended version of The Lost Abbey’s Serpent’s Stout featured this month is the latest blended beer to be included in The Rare Beer Club, though it’s of course nowhere near the first. Diving deep into the RBC archives—there’s over a decade’s worth of previous beer inclusions at www.beermonthclub.com/past-selections.htm—yielded a surprising breadth of blended features, even one from the very first year in the online archives. In November 2004, Rare Beer Club and Michael Jackson welcomed the debut of Dogfish Head’s Burton Baton.

In an interview with Jackson (who’d been with the club from early on), Dogfish Head’s Sam Calagione explained that this particular beer—a brand-new release created for The Rare Beer Club—was meant to represent the shared historical brewing landscape between himself and Jackson, specifically those vividly hopped IPAs of England’s Burton-on-Trent, formative to them both. Burton Baton started as a slightly larger version of the brewery’s 90 Minute IPA, with hops continually added throughout the entire boil. It was then dry-hopped and aged on French oak staves for four to five months, before lastly being blended with fresh 90 Minute.

Much more recently, the club’s featured blended beers such as Broken Bow’s Blended Barrel Aged Barley Wine (highlighting a combo of bourbon, rye and red wine barrels), De Proef + Left Hand’s Wekken Sour (a blend of the former’s Flemish sour and the latter’s impy stout), and Monkish’s Rara Avis (a blend of Brett saisons: one rye, one spelt). Also: Grand Teton’s Vintage 2014 (blended and aged in rum barrels). One could go on. Any blended beers made a big impact? Any you’ve truly dug? Hit us up on Twitter: @rarebeerclub and @kenweaver.

Beyond the Bottle: What’s Your Favorite Barrel for Beer?

November 15, 2017 by Ken Weaver

The Rare Beer Club is featuring two barrel-aged beers this month: Nebraska Brewing Co.’s HopAnomaly, aged in French-oak Chardonnay barrels, and American Solera’s The Ground Is Shaking!, which spent eighteen-plus months inside of Vin Santo wine casks from Italy.

It’s pretty remarkable to consider how much the act of barrel-aging beers has taken off over the course of 25-ish years. Before I left All About Beer this fall to get back to freelancing, we had Jeff Alworth take on the history of Goose Island’s Bourbon County Brand Stout, which was the first barrel-aged beer of its kind when it was created in the early 1990s. (Jeff has been doing great stuff in his Classic Beer column, and this one is definitely worth checking out for a deep-dive into barrel lore.) We’ve quickly gone from a time when aging beers in barrels was a pretty weird thing to do—even the now-conventional stuff, like bourbon, brandy or rum—to our rather different present circumstances. You’ll find beers aged in Fernet barrels, Grand Marnier barrels, maple-syrup barrels and tabasco barrels. It’s approaching true that any food-ish product that gets barrel-aged itself has had some of its resulting barrels used to age beer.

So, aside from tabasco, obviously, what’s your favorite type of barrel for beer?

My first thought was whiskey or brandy, just considering all of the exceptional BA imperial stouts and barleywines over the years. I’ll often get a lot of chalkiness from Brett beers aged in red-wine barrels, and tequila and I have an evolving relationship—so no to both of those. While I rarely drink Chardonnay (we’re generally Pinot people), it’s Chardonnay barrels that I’ve personally found most intriguing expressed in beer, especially with a pale base. Russian River’s Temptation. Side Project’s Saison du Fermier. Anchorage Bitter Monk. Yes, please.

Beyond the Bottle: Who’s Got Your Favorite Design in Beer?

November 1, 2017 by Ken Weaver

There’s so much vibrant work being done in the overlap of beer and design. I especially dig the narrative angle of much of the Jolly Pumpkin label art—the hooded female traveler and attendant owl on Forgotten Tales of the Last Gypsy Blender; the regal & thirsty feline on La Roja, with epaulettes and cat bun; the paddling skeleton (in maybe the same jacket as the cat) floating by a dragon-fruit sea creature on Persimmon Ship. I have zero clue what the masked figure on the L’épouvantail Noir label is up to, for example. But I definitely want to find out.

Compelling beer-label design will often involve including a certain measure of narrative heft, usually driven by character. The cloud kings, multi-season brains, and supernatural spaces of Jester King’s artwork by Josh Cockrell. The full piazzas, barrel-aged apartment buildings, and living landscapes of Colin Healey at Prairie Artisan Ales. Also: witchsharks, wizard wolf, and ruin layouts from Bellwoods Brewery in Toronto, designed by Doublenaut. Partizan Brewing in London. The lush cans of Indeed. Plus, the pattern-heavy: the Stillwaters and Other Halfs.

It’s hard to imagine that there’s ever been a more creative, competitive period in label design. Which brewery’s artwork are you currently digging?

Beyond the Bottle: What’s Your Favorite Trappist Beer?

September 15, 2017 by Ken Weaver

The “Authentic Trappist Product” designation for beer is well regimented, with 11 breweries currently allowed to use the labeling. The ATP hexagon identifies beers made inside Trappist monasteries while adhering to certain key requirements—such as being brewed by monks or under their supervision, and generating profits used solely for monastic upkeep, or charity.

The majority of us become familiar with Trappist beer through one of the Belgian breweries: Achel, Chimay, Orval (Michael Jackson’s presumed favorite), Rochefort, Westmalle and the much-esteemed Westvleteren. There’s also Austria’s Stift Engelszell, La Trappe and Zundert in The Netherlands, Tre Fontane in Italy (with piddly distro), and Spencer here in the U.S. A twelfth, Mont des Cats in France, is technically a Trappist beer but it gets brewed at Chimay.

So, think back… Which of the above has made the biggest impact on you? Personally, I recall ideal pairings of Chimay Blue + Ashton VSG cigars back when I lived out on the east coast (and still smoked cigars). Orval’s pretty much always difficult to pass up. Westy 12’s proven world-beating or meh depending on the batch, while Westvleteren Blond is wholly different and pretty great in its own right. Plus, the Achel and Westmalle golden and brown beers are otherworldly and actually easy to find… But man, I’d put Rochefort 10 up against anything: epic malt depths and caramelization, but absurdly smooth and crisp. What’s your favorite?