Brooklyn Brewing Company - Brooklyn East India Pale Ale

Brooklyn’s IPA is brewed with a combination two-row pale and two-row English pilsen malts as well as malted wheat. It’s hopped with English Kent Goldings, Cascade and Willamette hops. Not a big floral, fruity hop nose in this deep golden ale. We found the body to be full flavorful, offering lots of big maltiness balanced well with a huge hop bitterness and plenty of alcohol content. It’ll warm ya up. Note a clean, dry, hop finish leaving you wanting more immediately. Overall, we really liked it. It’s what an IPA should taste like.

From its founding in 1987 by a former foreign correspondent and a former banker in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, The Brooklyn Brewery has been a leader in the introduction and marketing of good beer to the New York metropolitan area. The company's new 25-barrel brewery, opened May 1996 by Mayor Rudy Giuliani, is one of the largest in the East and Brooklyn's first commercial brewery in 20 years. The copper-banded, stainless steel brewhouse and fermentation/aging tanks are set in a 1860s-era former steel foundry in Brooklyn's Williamsburg section, a Mecca for thousands of New York artists, and site of many new art galleries and restaurants. Williamsburg was once home to dozens of pre-Prohibition breweries, including the famous Brewers' Row, a 10-block area containing 11 breweries. The Brooklyn Brewery's 50,000-square-foot brewery/warehouse complex includes the Tasting Room, a 300-person party room that will be hosting many community events and will serve as a gallery for local art works; and the Brooklyn Brewery Company Store.

The brewery is open Saturdays from noon to 4 p.m. EST for guided tours and beer tastings. The Tasting Room can be rented for private functions, catered by the highly rated Brooklyn chef Michael Ayoub of Cucina and Mike 'n Tony's. Our panel liked all of the beers sampled by the brewery, but felt that the IPA you’ll try this month really stood out. It’s BIG. We’re talking serious Original Gravity here and big full taste. It started out as one of the brewery’s seasonals but the public demanded that it be brewed all damn year! We know you’re gonna like it. Cheers!

For more information about the brewery and scheduled tours, call (718) 486-7422 or check out their web site at www.brooklynbrewery.com.

Catamount Stout Ice Cream

Don’t discount this one until you’ve tried it! The well-roasted malt barley used to make stout beers imparts a rich flavor that is a perfect marriage with many desserts. In addition to ice cream, stout beers have traditionally been used to accentuate spice cakes, honey breads, and it was born to complement chocolate mousse!

8 eggs, separated
1 cup superfine sugar
1 cup Catamount Stout
1 ½ cups light cream whipped w/ 1 ½ cups heavy cream

Whisk yolks, sugar and stout together until thick and mixture forms ribbons when whisk is lifted. Fold in whipped creams. Whisk egg whites until stiff and carefully fold into mixture. Pour into container and freeze, or use ice-cream maker. Serves 8 adults, four children, or your mom.

Source: The Great American Beer Cookbook, Candy Schermerhorn, Brewers Publications, Boulder, CO.

THE CELEBRATOR BEER NEWS - It wasn’t until 1982 that the Premier of Ontario announced that the sale of beer at Blue Jay baseball games at Toronto’s Exhibition Stadium would be permitted. However, Larry Grossman, the government’s consumer minister at the time,was against the idea, saying he didn’t want some drunk sitting behind him in the stands "puking" on his kids. Despite is objections, chugging suds at the ballpark became part of the game in Toronto. In 1987, Gretchen Drummie of the Toronto Sun wrote a story about ballpark beer. The article began, "It’s been five years and nobody’s puked on Larry Grossman’s kids during a Blue Jays game." Go Gretch-Baby Go!

THE REAL BEER PAGE - To avoid potential dehydration, runner Jim McDonough once reportedly drank 36 bottles of beer the night before the qualifying race in the Pan-American Games. He qualified while many others dropped out, thus creating a legend and a standard that may not be equaled. And Jaba the Hut chugged 51 cases of Guinness before watching the Pod Race in The Phantom Menace!

365 BEER TIME STORIES - In front of Crazy Art’s Beer Emporium in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, "Bullet" Bob Oldham used to give demonstrations of what he did best. Mr. Oldham was adept at opening beer bottles with his eyebrows. Although Bullet Bob often squirted himself in the eye while doing so.

Dear Murl,

I am a lay person just discovering the wild Microbrew Frontier! You may have covered this in a past issue of The Brew Harvest Review, but I did not see it as I am a new subscriber. Would you please explain "Original Gravity" and "Int’l Bittering Units" to me? Thank you in advance. You are welcome to my house any time for a lobster dinner, but be sure and bring your own bowl!

Best regards,

Bill Marsh

Tewksbury, MA.

Oh Billy, Billy, Billy...

Caddyshack. Ted Knight. Remember? "Oh Billy, Billy, Billy"... Man, I crack me up sometimes. Before I get into answering your question, let me just clarify a thing or two here, William. Are we talking East or West Coast crustaceans (I like the claws, though they’re tough to eat with paws) and as you’ve suggested it to be a B.Y.O.Bowl affair, am I to assume that I’ll be asked to eat on the floor as well? Let us hope not. Original Gravity refers how much the earth pulled you toward it before you started drinking beer as opposed to how much more it pulls you now. No wait... come to think of it, it refers to the amount of sugars in the bittersweet liquid solution (called wort) obtained by mashing the malted barley and boiling-in hops before it is fermented into beer. What it tells you is potentially how high and full-bodied the alcohol content and body might be for that beer. Generally speaking, the higher the Original Gravity, the higher the alcohol content and the more full-bodied the beer. International Bittering Units (IBUs) are a measure of the amount of bittering alpha acids in your beer. At one end of the spectrum, you might find and American Standard Lager such as a Budweiser in the range of 5-20 IBUs. Samuel Adam’s Boston Lager might fall in the middle somewhere in the range of 20-40 IBUs and a heavily hopped IPA like the one we sent you last month, came in at a whopping 70 IBUs. Consider yourself enlightened Billy ma boy.

Woof!

Murl.