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Craft Beer Blog from The Beer of the Month Club

A craft beer blog written by the experts of The Microbrewed Beer of the Month Club

Beyond the Bottle: Sipping Berliner Weisse

June 16, 2022 by Ken Weaver

august schell lunar interference bottleThe origins of Berliner Weisse, like so many beer styles, is pretty fraught, but this tart, rather low-ABV style was once the most popular alcoholic beverage in Berlin—with around 700 breweries making it during its peak in the 19th century (per Fritz Briem’s piece in The Oxford Companion to Beer). Made with wheat in addition to barley, fermented at least partially with lactic acid bacteria, these refreshing beers were often around 3% ABV and were traditionally served with a choice of raspberry or woodruff syrups—though those are a bit challenging to find in the U.S. these days. The majority of current-day examples here are consumed on their own, though many breweries lean heavier on acidity, ABV, or employ fruit in the beer itself.

The Rare Beer Club’s highlighted a number of German-style Berliner Weisse versions over the years (in addition to this month’s Lunar Interference from August Schell), including at least a couple other releases from Schell’s Noble Star Collection, such as Basin of Attraction (a dry-hopped take) and Solar Evolution (a mashup of the Berliner Weisse style and Flanders red ale). 1809 Berliner Style Weisse (created by Dr. Fritz Briem, who also wrote the Oxford Companion’s “Berliner Weisse” entry) and The Bruery’s Hottenroth are two of the examples you’re more likely to find out in the wild, and both capture the style profile pretty well. Bear Republic’s Tartare has been solid (but heavy-handed on the acidity), and Oregon’s de Garde Brewing has spent a good bit of time here­­—creating a variety of intriguing fruited examples.

Posted in: Featured Selections, Interesting Beer Info, Notes from the Panel

Beyond the Bottle: Tea Beers

April 15, 2022 by Ken Weaver

brasserie dunham concubine labelOne of Rare Beer Club’s two featured beers this month is Brasserie Dunham’s Concubine, a saison brewed with rice, Lemondrop hops, and matcha tea. For folks who’ve been with the club for a bit now, you might remember its predecessor, Pale Duck: Dunham’s dry-hopped and tea-infused saison that appeared in the club a few years back. (Pale Duck was itself based on one of Dunham’s early core offerings: Leo’s Early Breakfast IPA, which used guava and Earl Grey tea.) Digging through the RBC archives, some long-time members may also recall Jolly Pumpkin’s Bière de Goord and Fantôme’s Magic Ghost (both featuring green tea).

As for readily available tea beers… Your best bet might just be stumbling upon one at your local brewery. A whole bunch of folks have been dabbling with tea additions in recent years. Dogfish Head’s Sah’tea, made with foraged juniper berries and black tea, was one of the big tea-beer releases early on, but it’s more a memory at this point. Bottle Logic’s more recent Teacursion Tropical Tea IPA was based on its delicious Recursion IPA, with black tea. And Guinness’ Open Gate Brewery and Barrel House in Maryland recently released cans of Breakfast Tea Amber (made with Irish breakfast tea) for St. Patrick’s Day. Still, wee releases.

Try any tea beers besides this month’s feature? Got a local brewery experiment with some sort of tea addition? Let us know what’s good on Twitter via @RareBeerClub.

Posted in: Featured Selections, Interesting Beer Info, Notes from the Panel

Beyond the Bottle: 5 Classic Cherry Beers

February 15, 2022 by Ken Weaver

Oude Kriek Vieille bottleAside from the sample bottle of Oude Kriek Vieille crossing my desk this month, it’s been a while since I’ve had a cherry beer. It got me flipping through my copy of LambicLand, and scrolling through old cherry-beer notes, and I wanted to revisit (and suggest, if you haven’t tried these already) five classic cherry beers I’m really looking forward to trying again. Let us know on Twitter via @RareBeerClub what classic cherry beers come to mind for you.

Russian River Supplication (to start off with a local) is generally my go-to on the Belgian-style side of their menu. Transcendent dark nectar featuring sour cherries and aged in Pinot Noir barrels, including a mixed ferment of Brett, Lacto, and Pedio. New Glarus Wisconsin Belgian Red always felt like the perfect Thanksgiving beer, brimming with over a pound of Door County Montmorency cherries per bottle (working out to like 600 grams/L, if I didn’t screw up the math). Vibrant cherry-pie character and effervescence; perfect for turkey. Shout out to Matt for the Midwest pickups. Cantillon’s Lou Pepe Kriek, which was weirdly my first sour beer, features 300 grams per liter of Schaerbeek cherries with two-year-old lambic, and it packs an expressively acidic, cherry-laden punch (ditto for 3 Fonteinen’s Schaarbeekse Kriek). Lost Abbey Cuvee de Tomme adds in raisins, candi sugar, and fermentation inside of a Bourbon barrel, resulting in a huge and hugely unique classic cherry beer. And can’t help but mention Rodenbach Alexander: a blend of aged and fresh beers with macerated sour cherries added, first brewed in 1986 for what would have been Alexander Rodenbach’s 200th birthday. A brilliant special release from Rodenbach that aged very gracefully (my first taste was from a bottle hitting its prime around 10 years), this thankfully got un-retired in 2016.

Posted in: Featured Selections, In the News, Notes from the Panel

Holiday 2021 Special Offer

December 6, 2021 by Kristina Manning

Rbc Logo

Our final Special Offer of the year is one we’ve been excitedly working on putting together for quite a while. Featuring four superb and very limited-distribution imported beers from world-class brewers, each one a perfect choice for the winter season, we think you’ll want to stock up as a gift to yourself to celebrate the end of 2021, and to keep celebrating into 2022… We certainly will!

A list of the beers appears below, but we encourage you to visit the special offer page for full tasting notes and access to the order form.

  1. Rodenbach Red Tripel – Belgian Tripel blended w/ Cask-Aged Flemish Red-Brown Ale. 8.2% ABV
  2. Grande Cuvée Déjeuner Impérial – Imperial Stout aged in Bourbon barrels w/ maple staves and maple syrup, then cold-steeped w/ premium coffee. 11.5% ABV.
  3. Straffe Hendrik Xmas Blend 2021 – Blended Quadrupel aged in Burgundy, Port, & other barrels. 11% ABV.
  4. Samichlaus Classic (2016 Vintage) – Strong Doppelbock. 14% ABV.

Flexible ordering allows you to order 4, 6, 8, 12, 18, 24, or 48 total bottles, combining any of the six featured beers in any way to get there so that you can easily try them all.

ORDER ONLINE or at 800-625-8238 Mon – Fri, 7am – 4 pm Pacific. If your Rare Beer Club membership was a gift, you will be contacted by one of our team members for payment information if you submit your order online.

Learn More for full tasting notes, and to access the order form.

The order cut-off for this Special Offer is 12:00 PM Pacific on Tuesday, December 14, 2021. Orders will begin shipping out about a week later.

Cheers!
Kris Sig

 

 

Kris Calef
President, The Rare Beer Club®

Posted in: Featured Selections, In the News

Beyond the Bottle: Go-To Glassware

November 15, 2021 by Ken Weaver

beer glassesI like geeking out on glassware. We used to fill RateBeer forum threads with detailed and honest-to-god-100%-interested discussions of shape, volume, glass thickness, the benefits and drawbacks of nucleation points, whether those varietal-specific wine glasses were 100% or only partly bullshit… Important matters such as these. Does beer really taste different if it lands on a different section of my tongue first? Is the concavity of that shape improving the aromatics? God I miss that free time. More recently, I designed a few of my own glasses for a project I was doing, including a multicolored pattern on a stemless wine glass. It ended up being my favorite glass for photos, because you could spin it to match your beer: greens and reds popped with stouts; IPAs amplified blues and pinks, and the whole thing kinda glowed.

Before the pandemic, I would’ve pegged my go-to glassware as the Riedel Veritas beer glass I’d picked up maybe five years back. Featherweight (like some older Duvel glasses, and less fragile, thankfully), super thin, beautiful details, just a pleasure to drink from… Now, we’re a little less fussy. We’ve usually got an IPA pouring on our house’s kegerator, and a handful of curvy, medium-size nonics have become the go-to: the English-style pub glasses that are one of the fixtures at local brewpubs. Our most recent are from Russian River’s Windsor spot.

Posted in: Beer Education, Featured Selections, Notes from the Panel

Beyond the Bottle: Kegerator Life

October 15, 2021 by Ken Weaver

kegerator series x double 1 1Shortly after the pandemic started last year, my wife brought up the purchase of a kegerator. She’d put together a spreadsheet, and—given how ubiquitous and expensive four-packs had gotten in the Bay Area, at least—that spreadsheet indicated that the payback time for a used kegerator would be pretty quick (especially given the prospect of having to bunker down for many months). We bought a two-tap used kegerator from a guy up in Healdsburg soon after my wife wooed me with data, and it’s proven to be one of our smartest beer purchases yet.

First, quick downsides: Kegerators obviously aren’t for everyone, and ideally the purchase of one would increase the quality of beer consumed rather than the quantity. Take good care of yourself, first and foremost, and recognize that the ability to pour any amount of beer at any time is probably one of those “With great power comes great responsibility” situations. That said… the upsides have been many. Beyond accumulated cost savings, we’ve never been able to have such consistently fresh beer—particularly with a lot of retail beers sitting on shelves, and/or stuff only being available for curbside pickup (i.e., no chance to look at date codes). We make fewer trips for beer acquisition, reducing our risk factors during a pandemic. And, given the shambled state of draft beer out here, a lot of our local breweries that didn’t offer kegs direct to consumers before have started to, significantly expanding local options. When we do buy cans and bottles now, it’s stuff we’re excited about rather than overpriced staples.

Have you taken the kegerator plunge yet? Been considering it? What’s your favorite part of kegerator life—or, what’s been keeping you from it? Hit us up on Twitter @RareBeerClub.

Posted in: Featured Selections

Beyond the Bottle: The Drunken Botanist

July 15, 2021 by Ken Weaver

drunken botanistI’ve amassed a pretty decent library of beer- and alcohol-related books over the years as part of my work, but it’s rare to encounter one that fundamentally shifts how I think about beer. I finally got around to reading Amy Stewart’s The Drunken Botanist (had gotten it as a gift off my wish list a few years back), subtitled “The Plants that Create The World’s Great Drinks.” It approaches alcoholic drinks through the lens of botany, starting with the main sources of fermentable sugars—from agave to wheat—before heading into briefer sections that discuss the numerous herbs, spices, flowers, fruits, trees, nuts, seeds, vegetables, etc. that are used to infuse, mix, and garnish our drinks. Just about everything we imbibe starts out as a plant.

While not beer specific, The Drunken Botanist includes sections on barley, hops, and yeast, as well as so many of the special additions that contribute unique flavors and aromatics to beer. The book’s broken into easily manageable chunks—five pages focused on oak, for example; a few pages on lemon verbena; a single page for lesser-used things like tamarind—sprinkled with both botanical science and key historical tidbits, and it was ideal for picking up during lunch or whenever I had a spare half-hour. I learned about how fungi-infected rye might’ve influenced the Salem Witch Trials. How modern citrus trees likely trace their origins back to early versions of the pomelo, citron, and/or mandarin. And how basically all modern plums in the U.S. originate from the plant breeding of Sonoma County’s own Luther Burbank (my wife and I lived on the same block as the Luther Burbank Gardens for a number of years; it was also the first time I had allergies). Overall, the book succeeds in bringing to life the many historic and contemporary ties between the plant world and the alcoholic beverages we love.

Have you checked out The Drunken Botanist yet? Found other good beer-related books over the last year you think are worth digging into? Let us know on Twitter via @RareBeerClub.

Posted in: Featured Selections, Notes from the Panel

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