FOOLCiRCLE

I just finished the latest Zymurgy issue and it was their annual double issue covering a lot of action from the National Homebrewers Conference with all the gold winning recipes.

This was actually a pretty good issue, as their double issues typically are. The biggest draw back is by the time I finish reading them I always want to go to the National Homebrewers Conference and the Great American Beer Festival (I really want to go to this some time, actually annually). My favorite article had to be the AHA Winner’s Circle article where they actually publish the winning recipe from each category at the NHC, now that’s cool. Not that I want to go and copy these recipes directly, but say you looked back at the last three years winners for a particular category, I bet you could really get a head start on a recipe and maybe even techniques that the judges are looking for.

Another great idea but only an OK article was the article titled the Iron Brewer Showdown. Basically the Iron Brewer Showdown was homebrewing sort-of a la Iron Chef style in that each brewer was given a “secret” (not so secret in this event) ingredient and then the different results were judged. This was a great idea for two reasons, one it took place locally at Iron Hill Brewery in West Chester, PA, and two because of the engagement between professional brewers and homebrewers. For this particular event, IH mashes-in a Blonde Barleywine (100% Pilsner malt) twice to get one batch of beer, basically they just want the strong first runnings from the grain. So this Pilsner malt is still soaked with sugar, so the brewer (Chris LaPierre) invited the local homebrew club (BUZZ) to come and take his second runnings and doctor them up and make a beer out of them. Garrett kind of did this on his own with Stewart’s brewer (Ric Hoffman) after they brewed their barleywine and he brewed his Stewart’s Sloppy Seconds Strong Ale (S^4). Anyway, back to the Iron Brewer, after each homebrewer doctored and brewed the their beer they all brought them back to be judged for creativity, drinkability, and other factors. The winner was invited to an exclusive beer dinner for four each course served with one of the beers from the Iron Brewer competition and paired with a unique menu. Pretty cool.

Another cute article was one titled So I Married a Homebrewer. The title alone is enough to make most of us bag up laughing. The article was more cutesy and tongue-in-cheek then anything else, but I could have read more for it kept me smiling. After that the magazine kind of went into magazine mode and hit on a lot of topics which were boring to me, but I read them still. This was a nice issue over all.

Normally I’ll sit here with the magazine in front of me as I review it, but this time I happened to forget it, so don’t be surprised if there is more added to this post later.

Also, BYO is the worst about keeping their website up to date. Since I breezed through this issue in one lunch (per usual) I have been sitting on it for about a week waiting for BYO to throw a picture of the new cover up so I could use it here. Didn’t happen, so now I took the lame picture above to use in the post.

The cover actually grabbed my attention for once. Professional brewer on the cover (Great Divide president/brewer), the promise of 10 gold medal clones, and brewing with coffee – all things I am interested in. Brian Dunn (the Great Divide guy) brews great beer so I was waiting for an interesting article, guess what? No article, just a paragraph or so of him talking about how to properly brew an Old Ruffian Barleywine, which happened to win a gold medal, which happens to be one of the 10 clones. Then there was nine other snippets from nine other non-exciting brewers about nine OK sounding beers – double let down. Then there was the article on coffee and beer. It was mostly interesting, but felt very opinionated. Like I was looking for more of a scientific approach where he would brew the same beer repeatedly and use different kinds of coffee additions and or even different roasts or regional coffees. Like I could think of three ways to incorporate coffee: beans, ground, and brewed. And also multiple times to add these forms of coffee: to the mash tun, to the boil (different times), to the fermenter, to secondary, at bottling – it was a little lame honestly. He basically told you what he liked best through his trial and error but never really explained the trials, oh well. Other than that I don’t remember the articles being very remarkable, so they probably weren’t. Though this is the magazine I bitch about the most, I still enjoy reading it, it’s the fluff of the beer magazine community, to me.

The ‘Food Issue’. Definitely a step in the right direction from the last issue, but also seems to be a little trendy to me, a little with the times instead of ahead of the times. Right now, and for the last while, beer & food pairings and cooking with beer have been hot topics. Cool that they are choosing to advocate this, but often I have felt that these guys were slightly ahead of the curve. Oh well, what’s next the ‘Session Issue’?

Right off the bat in the Beer Smack section (where the two founding brothers sign off) there is a great little list of things a restaurant or chef can do to make their place a better beer/food location. I actually thought this was really great, would love to see it flushed out. Perhaps printed in a book-mark-esque format and then flood the restaurant and beer scene so everyone in the business sees this information. Another very current debate going on in the beer world is something along the lines of: are mass produced craft-style beers still craft beer? Like Blue Moon for example. Blue Moon is made by Coors, Anheuser Busch also has several on the market right now. And the debate kind of goes like this; if it were a blind tasting, based on what you see, smell, fee, and taste in the glass (and this is the only information you know) what makes it a craft beer? And should these better mass produced beers be considered craft? I like Blue Moon as a wit, regardless of who makes it. I don’t think it is the best, but it sure is a clean easy drinker. That’s about as far as a fully formed answer that I have so far. Aahhh, 9 Steps to Beerdom, my favorite! This time featuring Rob Tod from Allagash – sounds like he’s one hard working lucky bastard! When we finally get to the main featured article on food & beer, ‘Beer: It’s what’s for dinner’ it isn’t a disappointment. It’s five short interviews with America’s top beer chefs plus included recipes from the chefs. Basically the common denominator that I gathered from the article was use any and all beer, use the beer in a reduction to amplify the flavor, if the flavor is in the beer it will come through in the reduction, and don’t be afraid to experiment. The article actually made me consider getting a job in a kitchen again, fun times with lots of headaches and low pay – sucks. My favorite recipe was for Sean Paxton’s Liquid-Nitrogen-Infused Rochefort 10 Ice Cream, damn right! One it uses Rochefort 10 for the beer (awesome beer), he explains how this style could be applied to make individual ice-creams ala Ben & Jerry’s style (my own words), and it allows you to play with liquid-nitrogen! Now, does anyone know where I can get my hands on some liquid-nitrogen! Next was the too many pages of beer reviews again, I’m starting to sound as repetitive as their reviews, yyaaawwwwnn. Interestingly though, the majority of the beers this time (and I bet hence forth) were either from a brewery or from an importer. Though I know beer is what they do, it must be nice to get that much “free” beer. The issue has a little section in the back that I rarely talk about called Beer Destinations and this time it was all about San Diego. There is enough action going on there that we might need to plan a vacation, nice! Overall, best issue since about issue #4, way to get back on top of things.

Zymurgy magazine ‘The Journal of the American Homebrewers Association’ is probably the best beer rag publication there is. It is written and edited by professionals, ex-professionals, and degree holding highly involved individuals. Overall it makes you feel that what they have to say matters.

This issue was the readers choice awards, for lack of a better idea for what to call it. It was the issue in which the homebrewing society at large are given the opportunity to vote on what they think is the number one beer, brewery, and other such topics commercially available in the US. First I’d like to mention the cool little article on some gentlemen who got to try a 138 year old beer(strong ale), lucky bastards! The results were good to fair (I did vote) on the readers choice awards. Dogfish Head’s 90 Minute IPA was voted the top ranked beer as was Dogfish Head Craft Brewery voted the top ranked brewery – WOW! Double your pleasure, now that was something! Best portfolio, ranked by number of beer brands named in the poll, went to Rogue Ales with 14 and Dogfish Head pulling in a second this time with 13. Top import, not overly surprising, went to everyone’s favorite Guinness Draught. And the final award was the spirit of homebrew award, this ranking is based on total number of votes divided by annual production in barrels, went to AleSmith Brewing, probably the least know out of the five (this is where Dogfish Head used to score big a few years ago). Also in this section were several choice clone recipes, not submitted by the breweries, but of high quality choices all the same. Following that were too mostly interesting and a little bit long articles on ‘other brown malts beyond crystal’ and oat malts. Both were fine reads but neither made me drop my mash paddle and slap myself in the forehead thinking “what have I been doing all this time!” The rest was, you know, the rest.

Now I will take the opportunity to both highlight a small section and embarrass myself. There is a small section in the front of the magazine called ‘You Gotta Drink This’. Well, when the AHA asked for our votes for the above awards they also mentioned we could submit a beer review that may get posted in this section. Guess who’s review made this issue? Yup, mine! Anyway, I don’t know if this is exactly how the original was written, but here’s what they printed:

You Gotta Drink This: Iron Hill Anvil Ale (Served cask conditioned)

This is the kind of beer you find yourself curled up next to for the entire night. After the generous 20-ounce hand-pumped English-pub style glass arrives with the final steps of the cascade still flowing, one is captured. The beer is served “warm”, maybe 55’F. This difference in temperature skyrockets the smell of this beer into a new dimension, really bringing out the hops. The taste is dangerous in the sense that you find you find yourself diving in for more to try and identify the caramel and cereal-like flavors along with the presence of more hops. The taste is like walking on the beach, or hiking in the woods. It is relaxing and rewarding, and could easily replace most daily drinks. The texture is light and smooth without interruption. Creamy smooth goodness runs all the way from lips down one’s throat, very refreshing. This beer would be a daily driver if it were a Volkswagen.

Nuff said.

Brew Your Own (BYO) magazine has dubbed themselves ‘The How-to Homebrew Beer Magazine’. Maybe. I like BYO enough, it’s the lighter fluffier read of the beer rags I receive, and I guess it can’t be too awful if I’m on like my fourth years subscription, but it just seems to be missing depth or something. It is like talking to someone who has an education or job authority that should make them appear to  have superior knowledge to you on a subject, but they talk without confidence so it is hard to rely on or trust everything they say. Kind of a weak analogy, but that’s what I’m talking about.

This issue was supposed to be about great summer homebrew recipes. It also had the annual editors picks best label contest winners. Basically, per usual, I am going to go over what I feel are the highlights from this issue.  Right off the bat in the ‘Replicator’ section we get a happy vibe, there staring me back is a clone recipe for Dogfish Head’s Shelter Pale Ale! Sweet! Not that the Shelter is my favorite DFH beer or anything, but I love seeing DFH get props even if they are getting bigger than the state of Delaware. Next, we get to their ‘Style Profile’ section with the man Jamil Z busting out a nice little profile on Witbiers. This dude know what he’s talking about, so I always take note to read his stuff. Second time in a row that BYO seems to be putting their magazine out late or I’m brewing the style early (also happened with my EPA), but it would be nice if we could get more aligned on our brewing. Next is the ‘Label Contest Winners’, I entered this two times I think like two and three years ago, and I’ll tell you, the years I entered some of my labels were better – but whatever. The Grand Champion label was definitely nice with a sweet Willy Wonka themed chocolate bar type label for a Triple Chocolate Stout, the rest – not awful. After that there was an odd little article on ‘Small Scale Brewing’ and they meant small, like a six-pack per batch, that reminds me of the coffee-maker method! Anyway, I can see the attraction of being able to do an experiment on a smaller scale so as not to ‘ruin’ a full batch, but it seems like a lot of work to get back such little results. Though not the same, I think I liked the idea of the Oatmeal Stout Experiment better where I split a five gallon batch five ways and tinkered with each of those. The rest of the magazine from there just felt boring, repeatative, and down-hill. They had a section with 15 beer recipes donated by readers and shops, OK but personally I would have liked to seen 15 clone recipes from the breweries. They also had a section again on how to build a stir plate and how to build a yeast starter (didn’t they just run those articles, yawn). So, per usual, BYO was an OK to read but nothing I’d adjust my style over.

Just finished the June issue of BeerAdvocate Magazine, ‘The Travel Issue’. Seems like these are becoming quicker reads or something, I finished this one on two lunch breaks, cover-to-cover (well, except for every sentence in the reviews area.)

 The issue per usual was good, but not quite as fresh feeling as some of the earlier issues. It felt as if they almost pieced some stuff together to call it the ‘Travel Issue’ without writing much about traveling for beer or beer meccas or any of that jazz. The issue started with a Top 50 list from Jason & Todd that really didn’t make 100% sense and then when they were questioned about it on line they basically said ‘deal with it for what it is’. Not really a cool attitude for a list that obviously was missing some of the Top 50 American Breweries. Drew lost me a little on his homebrewing article. He was talking about how aromas and scents are important, and then rounds things off with a ‘soapy’ sounding homebrew recipe for  a jasmine-orange ale. 9Steps to Beerdom once again was my favorite, this time with Mike Stevens from Founders Brewing – blazin’ beers! The next article that is worth mentioning is actually one of the few traveling-type articles in the magazine with ‘Nine Great Beer Towns You Didn’t Know Were Great Beer Towns’. Easton, PA & Frederick, MD both made the cut and both are about two hours from here. OK, Easton has Weyerbacher, worth the trip at least once. Frederick has two brewpubs and a brewery nearby, maybe worth another trip back. Ten pages of beer reviews again left me feeling thirsty and empty at the same time, that’s a lot of space to give to reviews . . . Nice little article on beer bread followed too, from a very simple recipe to ones that are a little bit more intensive, but none that are overly complicated. And I must say one of my other typically favorite articles ‘Last Call’ was pure shite! The writer called it ‘Ranter’s Block’ and talked about how peachy the beer world is for him, must freakin’ be nice you lucky bastard, enjoy! Anyway, still a great magazine, probably not there best issue, but still already anticipating next months issue.

Finally finished the May issue, the ‘Music Issue’, of BeerAdvocate magazine today on lunch. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, magazines are the perfect material for reading on lunch and on the shitter.

This issue of the magazine followed the same format as the others, which I think is good. Readers can jump to a favorite section, or avoid sections that they typically don’t enjoy. This was the ‘Music Issue’ and basically the overall theme drew on the similarities between the beer world and the music world and in all honesty, I couldn’t agree more. Favorite section AGAIN was the ‘9 Steps to Beerdom’, it just hits right for me for some reason. And of course the cover story, about beer and music, was interesting. The only beer/music group I knew of is The Pain Relievaz, and they freakin’ rock my world no matter how lame some of their beats are sometimes. I actually wrote a song for them at one point, a re-make of the Beastie Boys ‘No Sleep Till Brooklyn’ as ‘No Sleep Till Milton’ – it was real tight and I still hope they bust it out sometime. And OMG, freakin’ 10 pages dedicated to beer reviews, with no advertisements for the whole stretch!?  I can’t stand reading that many random reviews, don’t get me wrong I’ll check out one if I am very interested in the beer like the New Glarus Wisconsin Belgian Red, and I often read the last paragraph of each review where they talk about pairings and an over all statement, but that’s about it for me. Overall it’s still a great magazine, just maybe not the best issue yet. Keep up the good work!

I just finished the May/June issue of Zymurgy magazine. This is my favorite of the three beer magazines I receive. The company that publishes it is the American Homebrewers Association which is a sub-level of the Brewers Association, so it definitely has credibility.

This issue was pretty good per usual. The main feature of this month are all the different things that you as a brewer do to your own beer that make it different from someone else’s. It actually sounds quite similar to the idea of the article from BYO about ‘Creating Balanced Beers’ but taken to the next level – instead of just balanced also all the other things you can do to make your beer extreme or mild. This has been the second month in a row that they have run a short article about the idea of a Beer Sommelier and how this concept isn’t that far from a reality. All I have to say is ‘where do I sign up!?’ There was also a neat article from one of the scientists at White Labs yeast on how you can get different beers from the same yeast by controlling other variables; like the temperature of fermentation and the original gravity of the wort. Then there was a nice big dick-tease of an article about the Homebrewers Conference in Colorado this year – double whammy, really wish I could go to both.

I just finished the Brew Your Own (BYO) magazine March-April issue today on lunch. BYO has been around for many a year and in some ways could be considered the staple of how a homebrew magazine should be designed.

This issue was about the same as all the others, OK in my opinion. Dunno why, but I always feel as if the magazine is mediocre at best.  Some of the subjects covered in this issue were: A nice article by Jamil Z on Ordinary Bitter, an article about using oatmeal in beer in particularly with Oatmeal Stouts, brewing gluten free beer, formulating a balanced recipe, malting your own barley, adding non-welded components to a brew kettle, and all of there typical every issue columns Last Call, Homebrew Profile, Systems That Make You Drool, Reader Recipe, Replicator, Tips from the Pros, and the Mr. Wizard article. It’s funny, reviewing right now, I think I like the typical every issue columns better than the full blow articles. They are shorter, funnier, and usually better written. Anyway, Jamil Z is one of my favorite regulars in the homebrew community and his article on Ordinary Bitter was nice, wish I read it before I brewed my EPA, but hey, whatever. I thought the next three major articles basically sucked and the writers must have been paid per word, especially the balanced recipe article. It was a bunch of fluff. The article on malting your own barley was a little too detailed orientated for light reading on lunch, but it did spark a spark for next fall brewing a beer with homegrown hops and barley that I malted – sweet! After that, all the typical articles are just fun to read. They aren’t trying to tell you how to do something from an Average Joe point of view, they just giving you info on what other homebrewers are up too. Well, except for maybe the Mr. Wizard article which can be quite technical, but is coming from a dude who knows what’s up. Enough for now.

This issue was titled ‘Living the High Life’. Did somebody say Miller? Did BeerAdvocate house Miller’s slogan? Just kidding. This issue was kind of about the bling-bling of the beer world. Not quite the who’s who, but more like the if you want the best of this style beer get this, or the ultimate 6 pack of beers would be made of these, and the best beer trips in the world would be to these places. Once again my favorite article was the ‘9 Steps to Beerdom’ where Greg Koch of Stone was highlighted. Dunno why, but I think in every issue this has been my favorite part, Tomme Arthur, Larry Bell, Nick Floyd and now Greg Koch. I swear I can rattle off at least 5 or more people I would love to see featured here. Regardless, the layout and articles are very cool and appropriate once again. Also, the article on the new Sam Adams pint glass is pretty cool, cool enough that I may put out the $32 for a four pack of them (not counting shipping).

Once again, the worst part was the reviews section, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – leave them on the website! And finally the cherry-on-top of all stoopidness was the full page ad by Eulogy and Michael Naessens (owner) where he makes himself look and sound like a ridiculous pompous ass. I’m not saying Eulogy isn’t cool, or there new place won’t be the shit, or even that he doesn’t know his stuff about beer – but what I AM saying is you look like a freakin’ buffoon trying to convince us (persuade us?) all that you are not only ‘The Man’ but the one and only true ‘Belgian The Man’ (whatever the hell that means). Learn to be humble, it goes a long way – wow, at least your ad got my attention.