Weather of course will play a part this weekend, but everything looks great for the festival.  Part of my job is to worry about what might go wrong, but to be honest I’m down to worrying about details. HAH, this could be famous last words…

We have no idea how popular this event will be. We know the cask ales will be great, but how will Portland respond?  We’ll see. Novare Res is ready…

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NERAX at Novare Res Update

This is the first NERAX festival in Maine, and quite possibly the first cask  ale festival ever in Maine. We will have 30 cask ales, 10 British, 10 German, and 10 American. Well, maybe a few more American…

We’ve been a long time putting this together, not without challenges, but we think this will be a spectacular experience and perhaps the beginning of a long term relationship between cask ale and beer lovers in Maine. Sorry for the pomposity, but we’re really excited about this event.

Novare Res opens at 3:00pm on Friday. Entry is $10 which buys a festival pint glass and your first pint.

The bounty of cask ale doesn’t end there. Sebago Brewing is launching a cask program at their Portland pub on November 2. They plan to offer 5 cask ales. Their intent is to offer cask ale on an ongoing basis at their pubs. This is good news indeed!

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Cask Ale In Portland

One [Brewers Association] member from the Netherlands reports, “Staff of Bayerische Staatsbrauerei Weihenstephaner [where the German brewing school resides], who live throughout the area, have all reported the complete destruction of hop fields in the region.” Other reports indicate that the damage was local in some areas and effected about only 25% of the region.

Also effected are several Sam Adams beers, including their flagship Boston Lager. According to Papazian’s article, it can take up to two years for a newly planted hop vine to yield a full harvest, so production may be effected for a couple years. Other Hallertau growing regions around the world may be able to fill some of the demand, but while their bitterness is similar, varieties grown elsewhere tend to have a floral note that Hallertauer-grown hops lack.

Let’s hope that the damage is not too widespread, especially if you homebrew with Hallertauer-grown hops. I have to imagine that Jim Koch would be able to get his hands on hops before your local homebrew shop would.

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German Hallertauer Crop Damaged by Storms

XXXX IPA is a non-traditional American IPA with a brilliant copper color and the classic citrus nose of Cascade Hops. This beer demonstrates a unique balance of malt-inspired, delicate red grapefruit sweetness and lingering hop dryness. The OG and final Alc./Vol. provide the structure and body to balance the harmony of distinct flavors. Cascade, Warrior, Summit and Glacier Hops are used for bittering and Cascade Hops are added for dry hopping after fermentation. This hop blend is well balanced with Malted Wheat, Pale Ale, Crystal, and CaraMalt Malts.

The XXXX IPA will be available in 22 oz. foiled bottles by mid-May. Shipyard was nice enough to provide me with a sample bottle. When I was at the brewery store picking it up, I noticed that the 4-X is already available there, though I thoughtlessly neglected to notice the price.

I chilled my bottle to the suggested 55° and poured it into a nice NERAX tasting glass. I was greeted by some citrus hops and a huge, pillowy off-white head. On a smooth pour down the center of the glass, I was able to pour out maybe 12 ounces into my 20 ounce glass. The head subsided somewhat slowly and left little or no trace of itself on the sides of the glass. The color, as promised, was a very appealing copper. It’s noticeably darker than Shipyard’s Export and Pale Ale, but still perfectly bright. This is a very good looking beer.

The first sip yielded lots of hops balanced nicely by the malts. It was quite dry, but not in an off-putting way. Whereas something like a Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA is quite the hop bomb, this beer is hopped less aggressively and yields, in my opinion, a slightly more drinkable beer. The taste is coppery and has some nice citrus or pine notes to it. The mouthfeel is smooth and the malts give it a nice fullness. Most interesting to me is that, while I’m sure it was used, the telltale Ringwood taste of most Shipyard beers was absent, or at least well-masked, in this beer. The finish is clean and dry.

I paired it with a spicy chili. The bottle recommends Cajun food or barbecue, and chili was close enough. The assertive hops stand up well to spicy food, and the malty fullness helped to calm to habenero peppers I included in this batch. Overall, I would call this a very satisfying beer that is worth seeking out. At over 9% ABV, it’s no session beer, but for the occasional treat, it will find its way into my refrigerator again.

My Verdict: Seek This One Out. When this one shows up on the shelves of your local beer shop, grab a couple and invite some beer loving friends over to share. If it doesn’t show up by June, Portland is lovely by then, and you should definitely consider a visit to Newbury St. to grab some.

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Shipyard Announces New XXXX IPA

In an article in Brewing Techniques magazine Randy Mosher said this about parti-gyle brewing:

“One technique that has almost disappeared from modern practice is parti-gyle brewing. This technique involved drawing off the first part of the mash and using it to make strong ale or barley wine, then remashing the grain and drawing off the second runnings for a more ordinary, weak and watery concoction called small beer, the light beer of its day.

The fabrication possibilities of the time made it relatively easy to construct large wooden mash tuns, but the technology required to construct equally large kettles had yet to be developed. Consequently, English ale breweries often made three brews from a single mash – strong (XXX), common (XX) and small (X) beer. In fact, this is the historical basis of the categories of Belgian Trappist beers: triple was made from the undiluted wort from the mash, double was made from the runoff from reflooding the first mash, and single was made from a subsequent infusion.”

The first of our beers is from the John Harvard brewpub in Connecticut, and the second is from our very own Marshall Wharf Brewing Company in Belfast.

The folks at Marshall Wharf initially set out to make a Barley Wine. That beer reportedly finished off in the 12% range. We’re not getting that beer at NERAX, but I’m sure looking forward to trying it somewhere here in Maine. The small beer, Little Toot, was a natural part of the Barley Wine project. It’s not finished yet, but it seems to be headed for a range of 4.1%-4.5%  This one on cask should be a lot of fun.

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Small Beers at NERAX

Mead is somewhere between beer and wine on the drinks spectrum. It’s made by fermenting honey. Mead is an ancient drink, perhaps the oldest alcoholic beverage.

Maine Mead Works is producing a product that is clean, crisp and delicious. The taste experience is perhaps more wine than beer, but it’s neither and well worth a try. Be aware, they make two styles: semi-sweet and dry. Both are very good, just different drinks for different occasions.

Sal and I toured the production facility today.  This is a start-up operation, small scale. They’ve been in production for a little less than a year. Two thoughts struck me.  This is American Capitalism at the most storybook level, a real start-up. It also may be one of the more fascinating breweries/wineries I’ve ever seen. Their continuous fermentation process will surprise and delight you. If you get invited, don’t miss the chance to visit.

Look for this stuff in the stores. Try it and make up your own mind. It’s darned good, and a new adventure!

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Mead In Maine

Here’s how it was selected… I got recruited to serve beers at the tasting so got to see the process for the first time.

The Winter Festival tastes beers in four categories: Old Ales and Strong Milds, Stouts, Porters, and Barley Wines. There were five or six beers in each category; each beer had won a tasting at a local festival.

The judging panels for each category consisted of five people selected by the competition organizer. The leader of each tasting panel was an experienced beer taster. The rest of the panel contained a mix of brewers, pub owners, and novice tasters – there was a real effort to get a cross-section of experience. Each taster received a packet of material beforehand describing the attributes and expectations for their category of beer. The objective is to judge how well each beer expresses the style, not just whether a taster ‘likes the beer’.

There are five bars at the Winter Festival. One of the bars contains only the beers in competition for the champion beer.

The tasters meet at a round table in an isolated room, and have a scoring sheet with columns for each coded beer, with space for four considerations: appearance, aroma, taste and after-taste. They code each 1-10. The scoring weights taste heavier than the other three considerations. The leader calls for beers one at a time. The serving people (my colleague and I served for the Stout tasting team) then take their trays to the champion beer bar and collect coded glasses with samples of the first beer. This process continues until all six beers are tasted. During the scoring discussion among the tasters is encouraged.

The logistics for all this is impressive. Including requests for re-tastes, we handled over 100 glasses of beer, and to my knowledge none got mixed up…

Competions like this are a big deal to British brewers, with significant commercial impact. The festival trade session followed the announcement of the results, and trade discussion of the judging and results was pretty intense.

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National Winter Ales Fest – Champion Beer

Prost struggled from the beginning, and many felt that their demise was just a matter of time. I felt they never presented a clear image of what kind of bar they sought to be; I never knew whether the problem was conceptual or in the implementation. Others, more practical than I, were simply annoyed at how many beers on their list were not available.

There is a silver lining…  currently the as yet un-named establishment is selling their stock of Belgian beers at 1/2 off; on Tuesday five or six were on offer on draught. I had a pint of Monk’s Cafe sour brown that was in excellent condition. I may have to go back to help them finish that one off.

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Prost R.I.P.

“Rogue Ales embraces the idea of communicating with men over a pint of ale. The Pints for Prostates campaign appealed to us because it uses a friendly way to get an important health message to men,” said Brett Joyce, President of Rogue Ales. “We hope every man in Rogue Nation listens to the message and asks their doctor for a PSA test.”

Kudos to Brett and company for raising awareness of this important issue through a medium that will hopefully reach many men. I’ll be adding a link and the PfP logo to our sidebar here this afternoon. Please consider donating to this worthy cause. Us TOO International is recognized by Charity Navigator for its effectiveness and efficiency as a charity organization, so you can trust your donation will be put to good use.

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Rogue Ales Sponsors Pints for Prostates

Allagash Dubbel was awarded the Gold Medal in the Belgian-style Dubbel category.

Allagash Tripel was awarded the Silver Medal in the Belgian-style Tripel category.

Allagash Curieux was awarded the Bronze Medal in the wood and barrel-aged strong beer category.

The Brewer’s Association World Beer Cup is held every two years and is the only international competition that awards just three medals for each category. This year Allagash was competing against 2,864 beers representing 644 breweries from 58 different countries! Allagash was one of only 17 breweries to wine three or more medals.

A hearty congratulations to Rob Tod and the crew at Allagash. I’ll be toasting to them tonight (with an Allagash beer, of course)!

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Allagash Scores Trio of WBC Medals