Go away. Please, just go away.

New Holland Brewing Company in Holland, MI

You’re walking down Columbia. It’s not too late yet. We’re just into September. You remember that Septembers signal the beginnings of college football and the smell of drying leaves against a backdrop of cool nights where you can have your car window down almost all the way on your drive home. But it can get chilly late, late at night, at times when you’re out. But September in the East isn’t like that. September is still swampy–thick and sticky, like swimming in a pool of creamed corn that’s been on the oven for way too long. You’re walking, though, anyway, and you notice a man coming towards you. You don’t know him, so you ignore him, and he passes by you on the street. It’s still too hot, and the sun is just barely going to bed on the horizon, but you can’t see it. You only see this man, now right behind you, asking you, “Have you ever been to Mexico?” You say you haven’t been. From there, things go downhill. He invites you to walk with him, and he hands you an El Mole Ocho beer from New Holland Brewing.

This man starts talking incessantly about Mexican food and the flavors that come to mind just from the imagination running its course. He tells you the El Mole Ocho is a beer dedicated to the mole flavors of the South, a unique, dark blend of chilis with a distinctive earthy and smoky flavor. You try the beer, hoping to be transported to a foreign land and swept away by smells and culture that comes from a simple sauce that packs such a punch. The beer, though, disappoints. You’re initially excited. You see a dark burgundy-amber beer that smells of sweet coffee and other complex chili flavors. The initial taste puts your mouth in a blender, with flavors of coffee and sweet malt tickling around everywhere. You’re still excited. But then the ugly side comes out. This man gets angry. You sense a dull and earthy funk now, and you worry about where you are. The man is very angry now and yelling. The beer gets worse. He keeps getting dirtier, just like the beer. You can’t stand either of them, now, and you quickly finish the beer before abruptly leaving, never wanting to return to either again.

You walk home and it’s dark now, with the orange glow of street lamps barely lighting the side streets. You flavor of the beer is still in your mouth, as is the image of the ugly, torturous man. You want to go to Mexico. You want to sample real mole. But you know you will not do either of those soon. And you certainly won’t see the man or the beer again anytime soon. Ever.

This chart is for everyone who has trouble with their styles of beer (myself included). It is a pretty interesting chart that gives a lot of the relationships between different beers and well, it might not be 100% accurate, but at the very least it is a great way to waste a few minutes of this lovely Labor Day!

Pop Chart Lab

Move over cans and bottles, the future of beer is here. Well, maybe not the future, but a damn cool looking beer sampling unit: the BeerVault. There seems to be some high-tech science behind the newest creation from Australian design firm Jones Chijoff.

The BeerVault fits the high-end beer bottles into UV-filtering clear acrylic canisters, which are backlit and suspended above the bar. Each beer is kept under the same pressure as it was while in the bottle, thus preserving its taste, while also keeping it chilled and ready-to-serve via a clear volume of liquid glycol that surrounds it and circulates through a chiller.

It also makes ordering beers easier. One of the ideas behind the whole bar is that people will be able to order their beers based on the color!

BornRich — Australian firm designs BeerVault for high-end beers

Someone get Sam Calagione on this case immediately. It looks like some divers searching for buried treasure..er…champagne off the coast of Sweden in the Baltic Sea have unearthed what could be the world’s oldest drinkable beer, dating to somewhere around the early 1800s. That sounds great, but too bad the beer is clearly bad by now and undrinkable. What’s that? Someone tried it?

Bjorn Haggblom, a spokesman for the researchers, says they found a handful of beer bottles this week while salvaging champagne discovered near the Aland Islands in July.

He said researchers who tried drops of the dark, foamy liquid liked the taste of it.

Swedish beer expert Goran Winbergh questioned whether it would still be drinkable because beer is perishable.

Um, so who’s waiting for the “Divers Die After Trying Beer from Ancient Shipwreck” headline that will show up in the newspapers in a few more hours? This is why we need Sam. Get him over there; have him test it; and have him replicate it. We can even go ahead and just call it something badass like Pirate’s Blood. There, we already have a name. You have your assignment, Sam.

The Associated Press — Recovering bubbly in Baltic Sea, divers find beer

Sour. But not in the good way. (Photo via MK Heisler)

For all the hubbub surrounding Brewery Ommegang, I’m quite surprised that this is the first time I’ll be addressing any beer from the New York rarity. If you’re unfamiliar with the place, they specialize in bringing true, Belgian style ales to the United States. Sure, a few American breweries will toss out a tripel or a Belgian style IPA occasionally, but Ommegang only specializes in Belgians. I’ve said for quite sometime now that I’m not the biggest fan of Belgian style beers. I can find them a bit too fruity or boozy for my liking, and I’m often nonplussed by the massive presence of Belgians at local bars that couldn’t give a shit about quality beer. So I guess what I’m saying is: This is why I’ve avoided beer from Ommegang like the plague. But things are changing. I may be getting spoiled, but I’m tiring of the standard stouts and IPAs in great quantity here, so I’m trying  to branch out. Surely there are Belgians worthy of my verbosity, and maybe Ommegang could take me to the dark side. My current forays into sour ales from Jolly Pumpkin and others brought me to a perfect outlier on my beer screen: the Ommegang Bière de Mars, a Belgian amber with the famous Brettanomyces bruxellensis, a wild yeast known for adding a sour touch to brews.

Though I was somewhat skeptical about the style, I was excited to finally dig into an Ommegang beer, especially one with a touch of Brettanomyces. The beer poured a somewhat murky, golden-red amber color, without a ton of junk floating around like I expected. The head stuck around on the beer for centuries, and remained through the duration of the glass. The smell wasn’t overly astounding either, with just some soft hints of sweet fruit, maybe clove, and some light malt. I expected the taste to be like nothing else I’d ever had, with bursts of sour painted on a sweet amber profile, but I was tossed onto a pile of pillows lined with a subtle apple flavor lined with a muted malt backbone that falls away very delicately to a slightly sour profile. The longer the beer sat, the less I found within the flavor, as the beer actually became tamer as it warmed with a light sweetness and the blended sour flavor kicking around in spurts. Certainly not a stunning brew, but also one that was highly drinkable and enjoyable. In fact, my bottle was gone in virtually no time at all.

So my foray into a new style may not have gone as planned to begin with. I appreciate the effort on this one, and I still found it to be awfully drinkable and enjoyable, but for the price and hoopla, this wasn’t what I wanted. The flavor profiles are there, but if I’m going to buy a Warhol print for a hefty price, I better get something bigger than a 1″ x 1″ picture of the letter “X.”

The Huffington Post has a pretty stock list up today about the world’s best beer cities. Gotta love these features from HuffPo that clearly try to just get reads for having “beer” or “bikini” in the title. What’s that? It caught my eye? And yours, too? Goddamnit.

Either way, it’s hard to disagree with most of the picks (Portland, Berlin, Bruges), but there are some oddities on the list, like Mexico City (really?) and Burlington, VT. Burlington, VT, home of the famous and much-loved on this blog, Magic Hat Brewing Company! What wild and funky beers they have!

Set between two beer-bustling cities – Montreal to the north, and Boston to the southeast – Burlington, Vermont is a university town with one of the best brew cultures in New England. Home to the quirky microbrewery Magic Hat, visitors can do as the local beer lovers do and sample homegrown brews such as #9, Fat Angel, and Blind Faith IPA, to name a few. Church Street, a four-block pedestrian-only zone buzzes with vibrant bars with top-notch beer on tap, including Vermont-brewed Otter Creek and the Long Trail beer collection, whose specialty beers change seasonally.

Yeah, whatever. When you need ten cities to fill out the rest of an article, you just start writing stuff in. “Oh, look HuffPo Intern 1, there’s a Magic Hat in the work fridge!” “Oh, awesome, HuffPo Intern 2. Let’s include that in our list!” “Neato!”

Regardless of the list, it did get me thinking of the better beer cities not just in the world, but in the U.S. Is D.C. getting closer to cracking a top ten, or has it already? Do number of breweries matter, or just the variety of beer bars and beer selection? I’ve got to think Denver would make my list, and certainly somewhere in Michigan. Anywhere in Montana making a push? What does everyone else think?

The Huffington Post — The 10 Best Cities For Beer Lovers to Visit

Thanksgiving in August? All right. (Photo via MK Heisler)

Saint Louis Brewery in St. Louis, MO

Holy hell there are some terrible pumpkin beers on the market. I’ve always known pumpkin was a perfect compliment for a great beer, with the hints of nutmeg, cinnamon, and other fall spices. For me, those could translate over to so many different beer styles–IPA, pale ale, strong ale, whatever. But little did I know a whole genre of pumpkin ales was brewing on its own. I thought a few breweries probably dabbled in this realm, and when I first started my craft beer life, I remember finding something called Jack’s Pumpkin Spice Ale and knowing it would be fantastic. Wrong. Terrible. But not completely unsurprising considering it was one of the dreadful Anheuser-Busch macros in a micros clothing. I was betrayed! I tried a few other pumpkin beers and was always disappointed. Maybe a brewery couldn’t pull off a good pumpkin ale, or maybe what I was imagining just didn’t exist. With the recent influx of fall beers into the D.C. area (which, seriously, college football hasn’t even started yet and we’re already seeing Oktoberfests and pumpkins? I’m still not sure how I feel about that), pumpkins are everywhere. I took one final stab in the dark at the Schlafly Pumpkin Ale and hoped for the best.

I’d never had any Schlafly beers before, and I almost had a feeling that they were a brewing company that sold knock-off micros. However, I saw that Meridian Pint was having a beer dinner event with Schlafly for D.C. Beer Week, so I knew they couldn’t be terrible.

The pumpkin poured a good-looking (surprise!) orange pumpkin color and immediately smelled quite strongly of ground nutmeg and cinnamon. A burst of sweetness was also present in the nose, and I was immediately transferred to Thanksgiving day dessert. The taste didn’t disappoint in this regard, either, with a heavy blast of pumpkin flavor complimented by a dash of cinnamon and nutmeg that really felt like fall in a glass. The pumpkin spice was quite balanced and the sweetness really blew through underneath the fall flavors. The only real knock I have against the beer is that maybe a better blast of bitter hops throughout could really make this a dynamic brew. As is, it’s a little too sweet for mass consumption and for anything other than a drink of every few weeks, but maybe this sentiment will change when it still isn’t 95 degrees outside.

Overall, I don’t have too many complaints about Schlafly Pumpkin. If you’ve been thrown astray on a search for good pumpkin beers, Schlafly is worth a try. A little bit less sweetness and maybe an increase in ABV could really translate this into a stunning beer but for now, just quietly enjoy the first real taste of succulent pumpkin pie you can get before November.

Probably, at least, because it’s a new week and a new one of these studies. But we’re beer drinkers around here, so when we hear about good health relating to our infatuation with craft beer, we’re joining the bandwagon. This study, though, actually is quite surprising. It states that people who drink in moderate amounts  actually live longer than people who don’t drink at all. And the real shocker: heavy drinkers (more than 3 drinks a day) live longer than non-drinkers as well. Whoa.

Moderate drinking, which is defined as one to three drinks per day, is associated with the lowest mortality rates in alcohol studies. Moderate alcohol use (especially when the beverage of choice is red wine) is thought to improve heart health, circulation and sociability, which can be important because people who are isolated don’t have as many family members and friends who can notice and help treat health problems.

But why would abstaining from alcohol lead to a shorter life? It’s true that those who abstain from alcohol tend to be from lower socioeconomic classes, since drinking can be expensive. And people of lower socioeconomic status have more life stressors — job and child-care worries that might not only keep them from the bottle but also cause stress-related illnesses over long periods. (They also don’t get the stress-reducing benefits of a drink or two after work.)

Not exactly the most rousing support of going out and becoming an alcoholic, but definitely a curious report to be sure. As always with these studies, be careful. I think we know that drinking in moderation certainly won’t kill you, but still can lead to certain types of cancers. But it does sound like you’re more apt to have a good time and be more carefree. So pick your poison, really.

TIME Magazine — Heavy Drinkers Outlive Nondrinkers, Study Finds

Maybe if I drink enough of these I can pretend I'm skiing.

Avery Brewing Company in Boulder, CO

The hardest thing I have to live without on the East Coast is skiing. Though it’s been at least four years since I last found myself on a mountain, I really miss those early Saturday mornings filled with McDonald’s breakfast and a cramped red truck chugging its way toward the top of the local ski area as the temps outside dipped as low as -20. Those were great days, especially when you found great powder or a day when you skied a trail perfectly or tried a new trick you’d never accomplished before. Those days were a little bit before my drinking days, and definitely before my days of stout love, but seeing a bottle like Avery’s Out of Bounds Stout, with the skier on the front and the ski dictionary name-dropping in the title just makes a man want to fly out to Boulder right now and wait for the first major snow dump of the year. And the skiing might not even be the best part. The best part would be knowing that you could find Out of Bounds Stout on tap all over Boulder no matter the time of year. That would be quite enjoyable. But with a place like the Brickskeller, there really isn’t any reason to leave the bottled beer mecca of the US.

The Out of Bounds Stout doesn’t try to be too flashy or overly exuberant–it’s just a very well done Irish Dry Stout. Considering the cast of characters in the stout world, it’s nice to find a reliable standby. Pouring your standard dark of dark, the Out of Bounds smelled lightly of toasted malt and a touch of coffee. The beer didn’t look overly thick or viscous, which is nice to find from time to time. The taste was quite nice, as well, with a sprinkling of well-tuned, dry malt hitting the tongue immediately with a good dose of hops to balance out the roasted flavor. The dry malt flavor really penetrated every further sip but upon warming, the OOB really did start to thicken up and became a rich delight. It wasn’t overpowering, but the balance of flavor was executed to perfection.

As I said, there’s nothing commanding or outright dangerous about Out of Bounds. It’s a smartly-conceived stout that won’t burn the belly but will keep you warm on cold nights. As far as the name, maybe Out of Bounds is a bit off. Maybe something slightly tamer like The Groomers Stout would be better. You know what you’re getting, you’re going to enjoy it, and you probably won’t wash out. You can send your royalty checks to me directly, Avery, for the name change. Thanks.

Who wants to burn the fuck out of their mouths with Miller High Life in Texas!?

The State Fair of Texas coming September 24th. No one can prepare themselves enough.