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Monthly Archives: November 2012

Craft Beer and Thanksgiving, the Perfect Pairing!

16 Friday Nov 2012

Posted by totalwineandmore in Beer, Thanksgiving

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Beer, Craft Beer, Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Day often involves relaxation and social time with family and friends, some football on TV, and the anticipation of a big evening dinner. Thus, different beer styles will nicely suit the multiple courses of the evening and keep the taste buds tantalized!

Before dinner: Terrific pre-dinner beers offer clean crispness and plenty of flavors to a fresh palate, with moderate alcohol that won’t overpower the senses. Abita Amber Lager is an easy-drinking Vienna-style lager that’s golden caramel in color with a toasted, bready malt character nicely balanced by mild hop bitterness. For more hop-forward character, Victory Prima Pils is a straw golden colored German Pilsner-style beer with heaps of hops imparting an herbal bite over layers of soft and smooth malt flavor. These pre-dinner lagers slake your thirst and keep the palate clean while prepping it for the food to come.

With dinner: Thanksgiving in my family has always included a traditional turkey dinner with popular trimmings such as stuffing, gravy, cranberry sauce, potatoes, squash and a green vegetable. Several beer styles with autumn-like colors can pair nicely. Bell’s Amber Ale and Scuttlebutt Amber Ale are orange-amber in color and won’t overpower the food with a mild floral, fruity hop character that’s well balanced by sweet malt undertones. With brown gravy and/or the darker meat of the turkey, a Belgian Strong Dark Ale-style beer can complement nicely. Adriaen Brouwer Dark Gold Ale pours deep burgundy in color and offers sweet, bready caramel malts, dark fruit and mild roast character delivering flavorful complexity with an engaging vinous essence. This style is stronger in alcohol; the Adriaen Brouwer is 8.5% ABV.

With dessert: The trend toward increasingly darker beer colors with each course of the day can carry through dessert. Thinking apple, pecan and pumpkin pie here, perhaps with vanilla or chocolate ice cream, both the Schwarzbier and Stout styles come to mind. A Schwarzbier (“black beer”) is a dark lager style originally from Germany that is moderate in alcohol and, as its namesake implies, is a clear dark brown, almost black color. But motor oil it is not. Examples including Samuel Adams Black Lager, and Xingu Black from Brazil, are relatively light-bodied dark beers on a base of pilsner malt in which the dark hue is derived from additional, specialty malts. Decidedly malty in aroma and flavor character with little hop influence, this style evokes caramel and chocolate notes with a very subtle undertone of roasty bittersweetness. It’s smooth and highly drinkable. Alternatively, Stout will generally provide more body and higher alcohol. Pike XXXXX Extra Stout, at 7% ABV, is virtually jet black in color with an espresso-cream tan head. Fresh roast coffee aromas with notes of bitter sweet chocolate and hops deliver a rich and complex character of roasted flavors, caramel, licorice, and hints of vanilla and oak to complement and balance the sweetness of the dessert.

Rob Hill
Certified Cicerone®
Author of Total Guide To Beer
Now available in iTunes Bookstore as a FREE download
Follow me on Twitter! @TWMBeer

It’s International Stout Day!

08 Thursday Nov 2012

Posted by totalwineandmore in Beer

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Tags

Beer, Beer Shop, Craft Beer, Stout, Stout Day

International Stout Day is a worldwide celebration of the iconic beer style, Stout. Taking place in homes, pubs, stores, breweries and restaurants; it’s all about celebrating the craft beer revolution, relishing in this beloved beer style!

The origins of Stout are in London insofar as Stout is an evolution of Porter, however, as history would have it Ireland gets the credit for introducing Stout to the world stage. Dating back many thousands of years prior to the 1700s, the product of Ireland was sweet, un-hopped ales, as Ireland’s cool damp climate was unsuitable for growing hops. This was the traditional Celtic ale. Through the 1700s leading up to English rule of Ireland, which began in 1801, England shipped its hopped ales across the Irish Sea to Dublin, thus introducing hopped ales to Ireland.

Ireland’s Arthur Guinness, who had been brewing the traditional un-hopped Celtic ale since the 1750s, switched in the late 1770s to brewing Porter in his brewery at St. James’s Gate, Dublin, in an effort to counter the burgeoning English domination of Ireland’s beer market. Guinness’s first two beers were named X and XX, with the stronger of the two, XX, later named Extra Porter Stout;“stout” meaning strong. Sales in Ireland took off, and later Guinness brewed a third, stronger beer named Foreign Extra Porter Stout for export to British colonies. One can easily imagine, in the atmosphere of a busy pub, that the repeated call for an “Extra Porter Stout” would eventually be whittled down to simply saying, “Give me a ‘Stout’”. And thus, Stout was born!

We hope you’ll join us in celebrating this classic beer style – to learn more about the fascinating history and different types of Stout check out our Total Guide to Beer, best enjoyed with your favorite brew.

Cheers,

Rob Hill
Certified Cicerone®
Author of Total Guide To Beer
Now available in iTunes Bookstore as a FREE download
New Programs Mgr., Customer Experience
Follow me on Twitter! @TWMBeer

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