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.
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.
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.
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.
You know the guy that’s always sitting at the bar? You know, the bar you always go to after work or at least once a weekend? He never sits at a table. He always seems to find a seat at the bar no matter how many people are there. You’ve never seen him arrive, and you’ve never watched him leave. Somehow, though, he will always have a seat, and he will always draw a crowd around him. He’s always cool-headed and doesn’t do anything too exciting and doesn’t go out of his way to start a scene, nor does he go out of his way to do any grand gestures for the other bar-goers. But there he is. Every time you go to the bar, he is there. He’s a guy you’ve thought of talking to numerous times, but you always decide to go another route, just barely making eye contact, just enough to know you’re there. But he notices you, too. He knows you’re at the bar. And he wants to talk to you. What do you do? Well, you sit next to him in that one empty bar stool at the oak-lined bar that hits you in the face with a scent of bleach and thick malt. You sit down. He orders you a 60 Minute IPA from Dogfish Head, a beer you’ve had dozens of times, and you sit, and you listen.
Say what you want about Cleveland, OH (and believe me, a lot of it has been and will be said), but the Great Lakes Brewing Company is one of the best breweries in the country. Which makes it a shame that it has to reside in a city that gets such flack and also must be related to Ohio State in some way. Regardless, Great Lakes does not make a beer that is worth passing over. And undoubtedly, some of their consistent stunners are their IPAs. From their Commodore Perry to the Lake Erie Monster, Great Lakes knows how to produce a powerfully hoppy beer with wonderfully well-rounded characteristics. So whenever I’m lucky enough to find the Lake Erie Monster hanging around the shelves even after being released a few months ago, I have no problem with immediately jumping on a beer that packs a wallop at over 9% ABV, but remains incredibly drinkable no matter the temperature outside or the state the beer happens to be from. Have I mentioned yet that I hate Ohio?
I’m starting to worry about my relationship with cask ales. Once a rare commodity that was worth immediately jumping to and consuming, these cask ales are starting to leave me a little bit high and dry on weekends. You know, sometimes I just want to stay in and enjoy a thick and flavorful pint on weekends, but no. You, cask ales, have to go off and have a lame night filled with nothing and you insist on towing me along for the ride. Well, I’m getting to the point where I can’t take it anymore, cask. It’s getting to be too much for me. What used to be a kind and loving relationship has turned flat and dull. I just can’t tolerate you the way I used to. In the past, whenever I’d see you arrive at the bar, I would approach with a smile and you’d kindly greet me in a long and slender outfit, wearing just the right color. And none of that has changed. But you can’t be all appearances, you know? I need substance along with sex appeal, and to be honest, cask ales, you’re just not cutting it. And my final straw may have come when you showed up as an Oliver’s ESB.
There are not enough quality red ales in this world. It’s the same problem I have with trying to find a really high quality scotch ale. So anytime I find either of these beers, they are a must-consume. So naturally, when I found the Gordon Ale on tap at Meridian from the awesome Oskar Blues family of beers, I jumped right in. It was even better to know that the beer wasn’t just a traditional red, but an imperial red as well. Can’t get a whole lot better than that on a rainy Wednesday evening.
After pouring a really thick and rich-looking dark mahogany, the Gordon emanated a fantastic scent of rich and sweet malt with a back-up chorus of cirtusy hops. The taste matched all of this perfectly with a thick and rich malt flavor that mirrored some of the better red ales I can remember, but with an added jolt of booze and a rather hefty dose of hops mixed in. The bitterness was also rather prevalent throughout that really added another dimension to this full-mouthed beer.
Not only a rarity to find in this area, but a really strong and tasteful imperial red, the Gordon is a fantastic beer that starts to connect the dots between some of the lighter beers of the summer and the thicker and denser beers of the fall. If only all reds could mirror this little fantastic brew. That would make the fall very tolerable.
Get hoppy. Hoppy birthday to us. Hoppy hoppy, joy joy. Hoppy days. Hoppy town. Hoppy as a clam. OK, some of these are better than others, but a lot of them come to mind when you delve into an American wheat ale that happens to knock your socks off and give you a mad case of hoppy feet. See what I did there? Yes, I’ve grown to love IPAs just as much as dark beers, and finding a beer loaded with hops is always a delight (if it’s done correctly). So when I saw a lot of chatter about some American wheat beer from Lagunitas actually tasting more like an overloaded IPA that had gone on a wheat bender, I decided to dive into the Lagunitas Little Sumpin’ Sumpin’ Ale to see if all this talk about a hop blast would book me a one-way ticket to happy town. See what I did there? You thought I was going to write hoppy, didn’t you? Well, just like this stupid paragraph, the beer took me for quite a wild ride.
One of the greatest additions to the D.C. beer scene in the past few months has been the introduction of the Meridian Pint to Columbia Heights. Aside from being a bar just a few minutes from my apartment, the bar really does have that neighborhood feel that is missing from many of the bars I’ve come across in D.C. It’s super bright inside, and it’s a place where you can pop in and surely strike up a conversation at the bar with a stranger or run into some of your neighbors or work associates. Needless to say, I’m finding myself there quite often, especially with the expertise of beer director Sam Fitz. He’s a really nice guy and super knowledgeable when it comes to beer. Plus, the bar is specializing in just American microbrews, so you don’t have to worry about dropping in and finding half the taps filled with Belgian beers. So stopping in on Saturdays just seems too easy these days, and with no real beer in mind, I picked from the row of taps a great beer from Avery Brewing in Colorado, the New World Porter.
Avery Brewing Company in Boulder, CO
