Fall is Here

I know you can't tell from the 98 degrees it was yesterday or the 98 degrees it will presumably be today, but fall is here. At least, the first fall seasonal is here, New Belgium's Hoptober. Summer is my least favorite season for beer so I was quite excited to see the first fall seasonal on the shelf yesterday. Even if I recalled that I didn't really like Hoptober.

I bought it anyway, along with a sixer of Hoss. I'm mainly writing this post so that I remember next year, I really don't like Hoptober. This continues my distaste for New Belgium session beers. I like Skinny Dip and, of course, I love Frambozen and 2 Below is a nice beer to watch football with on a cold Sunday afternoon. But, that's about it for New Belgium.

Hoptober boasts five hops and four different kinds of malt (including rye), yet somehow, delivers no flavor. It reminded me of a lighter colored more watered down Fat Tire. That's as close to a compliment I can come up with for Hoptober. Wait, here's another one, there's no objectionable taste. That's because there's very little taste, it was neither malty nor hoppy, it was like a weak beer or second beer. I now have 5 of these Hoptobers left and I can't think of an occasion where I would want one.

On the bright side, we're almost to Fall when we can walk outside without breaking a sweat and we can drink fall seasonals with some flavor. Just don't drink Hoptober and expect any.

Capital Brewery

Bernie Brewer, Bucky the Badger, Bob Ueker, Harvey's Wallbangers, The Green Bay Packers, Vince Lombardi, Bart Starr, Lambeau Field, Brett Favre (before retirement, the last 2 years never happened), Moose Haas, The Dells, Lakefront Brewery, Milwaukee (the only American city to ever elect 4 socialist mayors), Laverne & Shirley and Gorman Thomas. These are all reasons I'm a giant fan of the great state of Wisconsin. Now Kansas City has one more reason to love the frozen tundra of Wisconsin, Capital Brewery has started distribution to KS and MO.

I happened upon Capital Brewery when I went to the store last month to pick up some beers to have on hand for my son's 3rd birthday party. Capital's two brews available in KS (UPDATE: There are more than these 2 Capital beers available in KC), Supper Club and Fest (summer seasonal) fit the bill, they were new and relatively cheap at $7.99/sixer. I'd never had any of Capital's beers before and I was pleasantly surprised with each of them when I had them the night before the party. I liked them enough that I went downstairs and raided my secret stash of random beers that I've accumulated and didn't really like to obscure Capital Brewery's good stuff from my guests.

Fest, which is a marzen, probably my favorite German style of beer, is a nice refreshing beer, perfect for the summer. It has a fruitier taste than most marzen style beers but has the malty sweetness you're looking for in a good marzen. If I were to damn it with faint praise, I would say it's one of my favorite summer seasonals. But, it's better than that. It's a solid beer that I've bought a couple of times since then and I'll genuinely be upset when the summer's over.

Supper Club is an American Pale Lager and I generally don't care for lagers. But Supper Club is pretty good. It's about the same level as the pretty wonderful Boulevard Pilsner without the retro labeling. But the back story of Supper Club harkens back to a time of the regional breweries where every town had it's own beer. Supper Club would be Madison's compared to Kansas City's Muehlbach beer. If you're looking for something a little different on a hot day you should give Capital's Supper Club a shot.

Those are the only 2 beers I've seen from Capital in town, but I'm looking for more. Even though they mostly brew German styles, it's a good brewery and I've enjoyed the 2 beers I've had. I'm looking for something perhaps a little more substantial than Fest or Supper Club, but, being that it's 100 degrees outside, maybe Capital knows what it's doing.

Roll Out the Barrels...To the Incinerator

Enough, I've had it. I make this pledge to you, dear reader, that I'm through with barrel aged beers. I'm tired of it, they all kind of run together. Some are awful and others are okay, but they all taste pretty similar. I just don't get it.

I say all this because I drank the Great Divide 16th Anniversary Wood Aged Double IPA. I make it no secret that I love me some Great Divide. I even bought a sixer of Great Divide Titan IPA this morning. I thought maybe they could make a great barrel aged beer. They did make a good beer, I can't deny it. The wood definitely gave the double IPA a vanilla-y oak flavor rounding off the malt sweetness and softening the hops. But, in a taste test with some of my favorite double IPA's, it would be my least favorite. Mind you, it's good. At no point did I consider dumping it, I dare say I enjoyed it a little bit. But, the wood aging does nothing for me. It doesn't add flavors I want in a beer and it's ovedone.

Your mileage may vary on these oak aged behemoths. I've been rather selective in the ones I try for the past couple of months. Odell Saboteur was good, Boulevard Rye on Rye was good, GD 16th Anniversary DIPA was good. But I never bought a second one and I don't think I will. I can't think of any barrel aged beers I've bought more than one of and I'm not going through my archives to find one. I'm through with the whole thing now. I've said it before and I'll say it again, if I want a bourbon flavor, I'm going to have a bourbon, not a beer.

I thought the Rogue John John Juniper would be different. It was aged in gin barrels. It was definitely different than the bourbon barrel aging, but, I much prefer the regular Rogue Juniper Ale. Maybe I'm wrong, though they're my taste buds, I just don't get the added expense and flavor of the barrel aging. Maybe it's just that every brewery is coming out with these barrel aged behemoths. I don't know. It's just something I'm tired of. I know, I know, you've had this great barrel aged beer that would change my mind, you can tell me all about it. But, I had this discussion with the guy at Tipsy's when I bought the Great Divide. He said that the wood flavor was barely present and complemented the flavors of the DIPA. Nope, the wood was there, I tasted it and it was my takeaway flavor. It did complement the flavors, but it was still the main flavor. I wish I could have had it before it got put in the barrels. I would have enjoyed it more.

Showdown - Boulevard V. Odell

We got the group together again for a battle, a battle of titans, a battle that would be at the forefront of all battles if Kansas wasn't between the 2, a battle between Boulevard and Odell. We started with a simple premise, 5 beers of the same style being tasted blind by our group of khaki short clad beer drinkers with one big beer from each brewery. Each taster gets a vote on each style and the brewery with the most votes for that style gets a point. The big beer challenge is worth 2 points. The styles were Wheat, Amber, Pale Ale, IPA and Porter. The big beers were Saboteur and Rye on Rye. The participants were myself, Chimpotle, JJSKCK, Duff, Paul A. Ner, Yuengling and Yeti (who did the pouring). The snacks were pretzels and 2 slabs of RJ's Bob-Be-Que now world famous lamb ribs (courtesy of Yuengling who works at RJ's) which, incidentally, are wonderful.

The Scores
Odell Easy Street Wheat 4 - Boulevard Wheat 3
Boulevard Amber 7 - Odell Levity Amber 0
Odell 5 Barrel Pale Ale 4 - Boulevard Pale Ale 3
Odell IPA 5 - Boulevard Single Wide IPA 2
Odell Cutthroat Porter 5 - Boulevard Bully! Porter 2

After the session beers were done Odell was already the winner of the night 4 styles to 1. But, the vote totals were close at 18 to 17. We had some discussion as to what the proper scoring system should be and decided that the style score should be the one to decide the winner. But, Boulevard was a very clear and decisive victor in the Amber category. The Boulevard Amber is that good, there was no hemming or hawing of votes on that one and the victory was decisive. It should also be noted that nearly every one of us knew which beer was which just because we'd all drank so much Boulevard. I was quite surprised that Boulevard Wheat did not win its pairing and the deciding vote was cast by Yeti who knew, without a doubt, which one was which. The IPA was the only one that I didn't know which beer was which and I was quite surprised that Odell's IPA was much much hoppier than the Boulevard variety. Once again, we were hit over the head with the fact that when drinking blind, we really don't like Bully! Porter and I'm struggling to figure out what's up with that.

Saboteur V. Rye on Rye
We chose Rye on Rye because Yuengling had a couple and offered them up. I haven't had a Rye on Rye since our first tasting party. I'm happy to say that it's mellowed a little with 6 months of aging. I'm embarassed to say I thought I was drinking Rye on Rye when I was drinking Saboteur. They're not even the same style. Saboteur is a barrel aged brown ale with brettanomyces (never has a yeast been this popular, it seems like it gets billing in every beer, no other yeast gets billing) and Rye on Rye is, obviously, a rye beer. But, the 2 are very similar, especially with the bottle of Rye on Rye being 6 months old. They both have that barrel aging rasp at the back of your throat and taste similar. The Saboteur got 5 votes to Rye on Rye's 2, but everyone agreed that both are fantastic and depended on whether you like rye over brett.

Odell came out with a rather decisive victory 6-1 (remember the big beers count for 2) but I think it was much closer than that kind of like a 20-7 football game where the last TD of the winner was a pick-6 in the other end zone. After the organized festivities were over we played raid Yeti's fridge. I grabbed one of the leftover Odell IPA's only to be disgusted by my choice when Yeti showed me had a Frambozen. I was afraid Chimpotle and I were going to have to fight for it, he has a 150 lb. weight advantage on me after all and the only fighting skill I have is wrestling. Luckily, we were able to agree to share it. A bottle of Sixth Glass was also opened and like a bunch of pervs we sat down to watch some under 19 girls World Cup soccer action.

We're going to do 3 more showdowns of yet to be determined breweries. The breweries have to match at least 4 styles. Then the winners will meet up in another round until we determine a brewery winner. You may think it would be a good idea to do a double elimination tournament, but if we did that we wouldn't be able to declare a winner until the Fall of 2015. It took 66 emails between 8 people to get this one done. Let us know in comments the showdowns you'd like us to do. We already have an idea of the 6 breweries we'd like to do but would gladly take suggestions.

Diaper Crawl

Go pub crawlin' in Brookside to benefit HappyBottoms, a charity that donates diapers to needy families. I had no idea such an organization existed, but it makes sense as diapers are a necessity and they're somewhat expensive for something that gets soaked in #1 and #2. I'm lucky enough to have all of my kids out of diapers and now I have a reprieve from changing diapers until my kids are parents (I've never changed a diaper other than my kids and I've done it for 5 years). But, many people are still changing diapers every day and may need a little help affording them.

Anyway, the pub crawl is on August 7th in Brookside from 5-9 PM.The crawl costs $30 and gets you a t-shirt, Boulevard specials, Boulevard giveaways from some of the bars and one free beer at the after party. The bars you'll be hitting are Blue Grotto, Sharp's, Charlie Hoopers and The Brooksider. Sign up on the HappyBottoms website if you're interested or if you would just like to donate click on the big blue "Donate Now" button on the right hand side of every page of their website.

Liberalize Kansas Liquor Laws

There has been much hubbub lately about the Alcohol Beverage Control Board (ABC) this week deciding to reinterpret a rule that was passed in 1987 as part of the liquor by the drink legislation. In case you hadn't heard, the rule states that a drink's cost must be calculated based on that drink's alcohol content. The practical meaning of this is that if a 16 oz. beer costs $3 then a 32 oz. beer must cost $6. This, in effect, means buying in bulk, such as a pitcher, is not allowed to be cheaper than a single serving drink. Clearly, this is a stupid rule that needs to be revoked.

Unfortunately for Kansans, we have suffered through perhaps the worst legislative session in KS history where banning things like K2 and public smoking were much more in vogue than liberalizing Kansas' very conservative laws. I've been thinking about what I'm going to talk about when my state representative comes knocking on my door this time around and I've compiled a list of things I would like him to do when he goes back to work. And then I'm going to hose off my porch because my representative is quite the slimy specimen.

1. Allow wine sales in grocery stores with a Commercial Malt Beverage (CMB) retail license. The CMB license is the liquor license that grocery stores have that allows them to sell 3.2 beer.
2. Eliminate 3.2 beer. Anyone with a CMB license can sell beer of any alcohol content. The 3.2 beer law is outdated and, quite frankly, stupid.
3. Retail liquor stores should be allowed to sell food, mixers etc. This is a little complicated because of the CMB license. There would be little effective difference between the 2 licenses and may lead the way to your local Price Chopper selling Jack Daniels in the checkout lane. But, the prohibition of corporations getting retail liquor licenses may stop many grocers from getting the retail liquor license.
4. Allow liquor stores to have public restrooms and change trays. Those 2 things are actually illegal in KS. When I asked an ABC officer why they had the ban on bathrooms and he told me that someone could go into the restroom and put a mask on and come out and rob the store. That's the best he could come up with. But he made sure to include a condescending attitude while he told me that gem.
5. Retail liquor stores should be allowed to be open until midnight, the same as the CMB licensees.
6. Sale price of products should not be regulated in any way. It is currently illegal to sell below cost which makes it more difficult for retailers to get rid of excess product.
7. Allow samples in liquor stores and on-premise stores (bars). It is much harder for new beer and wines to sell in KS because consumers aren't allowed to try samples in stores.
8. Alcohol and drink specials should be allowed during certain hours of the day. Happy hours that discount alcohol or beer are currently against the law.
9. Lower the legal drinking age to 18. 18 Year olds drink and they drink a lot. If they can drink legally they will be less likely to binge drink or drink high alcohol content liquors in a short amount of time which endangers them and others.

With the exception of #9, none of these changes to the laws are radical and most are just common sense. Surprisingly, the liquor store lobby is against many of these because it opens them up to competition from grocery stores. But, sold as a package of laws, there is much to love for liquor stores. I don't think any of these changes would increase irresponsible or underage drinking and if they did it would be quite marginal. 

After the Catch

I'm a frequent "Deadliest Catch" watcher. We don't DVR it or anything, we just watch it every once in a while on an afternoon when we're not doing anything. I've never followed a storyline on the show, just caught what was on. The past couple of weeks we've watched the show in primetime following the story of Capt. Phil dying.

Last night I watched my first ever "After the Catch" show where all the skippers and Mike Rowe sit around a table drinking and telling stories. The show was obviously dedicated to Phil as they had his sons, a couple of his oldest friends and the cameraman that followed him for 3 years as guests at the table. I tried to pay attention as best I could, but I was distracted by the Coors Light pitcher in the middle of the table. It looked as though only one beer had been poured out of it. I looked around the table and not a one of the captains, Rowe or the guests was drinking a draft beer. Mike Rowe had something that looked like a cranberry and vodka in a pint glass. Most of the captains were drinking whiskey drinks from lowball glasses, even the kid who just got out of rehab looked like he was drinking a cranberry-vodka drink, I'll be generous and call it a Shirley Temple. Wild Bill Wichrowski made a show of having a Coors Light bottle in his hand while he was talking, but he had a whiskey drink he was actually drinking tucked back behind the bottle. The whole show was distracting because no one was drinking any Coors Light, yet it was displayed prominently in every shot.

My question is, does this bother anyone else? If the Coors Light wasn't so prominently placed in front of the camera I wouldn't have thought twice about it. But once I saw that it was obviously a Coors Light product placement, it became super distracting trying to find one person drinking Coors Light. Does it end up hurting Coors Light because no one was drinking it? I think they should switch sponsors to Jim Beam or Jack Daniels (which was mentioned in the show as being what Capt. Phil drank) so I can watch it without being distracted.

Neighbors Lounge

Neighbors Lounge in Independence is a bar I've never heard of and most likely will never visit. Nothing against Neighbors Lounge, but I don't think I've even been inside the Independence city limits in my time in KC. I only write of Neighbors Lounge because they got caught violating the KC smoking ordinance.

Long time readers of this blog or my Twitter followers probably know that I'm completely against smoking bans and prefer individual responsibility. If you don't want to smell like smoke, don't go near smoke. But that's neither here nor there. This is my mea culpa for my thought that the first bar to get caught violating the ordinance would be caught because city officials, be it police, health department, ABC, whatever, wanted that business closed or because they somehow competed too well with a cash cow like a casino (where smoking is still allowed). I don't think I ever wrote about this feeling or told anyone about this feeling but I know that I had that feeling.

Neighbors Lounge got shut down, quite simply, because they never stopped allowing people to smoke inside the bar. I did a quick Google search and found a review from New Year's Day this year (I know that these could be lies written by disgruntled losers who had a bone to pick with a nothing bar in a nowhere part of town, but since they're written in complete sentences, I tend to believe them a little)

they have the buzzer on the front door in order to allow their customers to smoke. We heard the old lady who owns the bar announce to bar customers that they could smoke as long as they were willing to pay the fine. She herself was smoking the night we were there.

I also found a comment from a 3 year old post of Blog KC that said bluntly "Neighbors Lounge on 40 highway is allowing smoking and is collecting money to pay the fines." I also found a post on some sort of smoker's message board where the Neighbors Lounge owner, Patty Holler, expresses concerns about the smoking ordinance.

Patty Holler, owner of nearby Neighbors Lounge in Kansas City, said she's getting customers who used to go to RG's and other bars. She said she has sympathy for Houser.

"You hate to see this going on right across the street," Holler said. "We're scared here, if this passes on April 8."

So I'm a little disappointed in Ms. Holler for her performance on the KCTV5 news this evening where she should have owned up to knowingly not enforcing the smoking ban. If she believes the law to be unjust, more power to her for snubbing her nose at the law. But she only hurts that case when she complains about the penalty being unfair and proclaiming some form of innocence. I'd like to see her put up a sign behind her bar that shows the Thomas Jefferson quote "If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so." I'm not saying she should, just that I'd rather see that than the 'aw shucks, we tried to enforce it' display she put on on the news.

The Miracle of St. Lupulin

The garden is overgrown, but with just a little bit of imagination one could see the beauty that once existed. The garden belonged to Henry Huggins in the early 20th century. You may have heard of Henry Huggins from a set of children’s novels and Henry Huggins was indeed the namesake of those novels. The author, Beverly Cleary, had grown up in the house next door and always loved the kindly Mr. Huggins and the lyrical quality of his name. In fact, the garden, in its glory, was a place where Cleary would play amongst the wondrous rose bushes and the vines that seemed to climb straight to the sky.

Henry Huggins would tend to those vines day and night, taking care to never run little Beverly Cleary out of the garden. The garden and vines took up a good 2 acres on the Huggins property and was surrounded by a 3 foot high stone wall. On the vines grew the finest hops in the world of every variety imaginable. Huggins, you see, was a hophead of the highest magnitude, long before hopheads had a name and were as plentiful in the Colorado mountains as snow covered peaks. In those days Huggins was viewed as more of a curiosity in the community.
Don’t get me wrong, Huggins was never a nuisance or a bother, no one understood what someone would want with 2 acres of beautiful hops. Everyone seemed to be happy drinking the local product made with small amounts of hops, Coors beer. And no one really understood why Huggins was always brewing his own beer. His beer was different than the Coors product, it had a bitterness and a much fuller flavor than the flagship Colorado beer. Most people in the community didn’t have much of a taste for his beers.

Undeterred, he kept experimenting with his brews. He tried all different combinations of hops with all different combinations of malt. He gave the beers all sorts of names used later by Beverly Cleary such as Ramona the Pest, Ribsy (a particularly filling brew) and Ralph Mouse (after a particularly pesky barn mouse Huggins had named Ralph to amuse Cleary). Legend has it that Huggins gave Cleary a growler of a brew called Beezus for Cleary’s 16th birthday, so named because after one drink the hop flavor made you say “Beezus” after each swallow.

Near the end of Huggins’ life he finally found his aha moment brewing a beer with the lupulin or the yellow resin that appears when you grind a hop between your fingers. The oils from the lupulin mixed with just the right kind of malt and generous amounts of Cascade, Perle and Centennial hops created Huggins’ masterpiece. Even the people in the community who grew up drinking and loving Coors couldn’t help but taste the genius in each glass of Huggins’ new brew which he called Lupulin. The beer was somewhat sweet with a pear and grapefruit flavor. It finishes with a hoppy, flowery flavor but is not overly bitter. Having tasted so many of Huggins’ previous hoppy beers for so many years the townsfolk couldn’t believe this beer didn’t make them say “Beezus” after every sip. They continuously asked Huggins how he perfected a hoppy beer with little to no bitterness, to which he would reply “it’s a miracle”. After repeating the claim several times, Huggins’ friends and family began calling the beer St. Lupulin.

The folks at Odell brewery started to hear the legend of the St. Lupulin beer and investigated. Henry Huggins had long since passed and his garden had fallen into disrepair. Yet, his relatives had some old recipes that Huggins had written up and they found the one that had to be the one Huggins called Lupulin, but everyone else called St. Lupulin. They are now producing the beer and calling Henry Huggins St. Lupulin. The bottles say that St. Lupulin was a mythical figure, but he was not fictional, he was the first hophead, the inspiration behind one of the greatest children’s authors ever and producer of one fine beer that should be available all summer and should be the American Pale Ale you seek out this summer. And if you care enough, you can still find the Henry Huggins garden. It’s not as nice as it was, it’s certainly overgrown, but with a bottle of St. Lupulin you can see the miracle that St. Lupulin performed.

Not a single word of the above story is true. I have no knowledge of where Beverly Cleary grew up or what the inspiration behind Henry Huggins is. It is true that St. Lupulin is a great beer.

Sam Sam the TV Man

I'm sure all the Dogfish Head fanboys already know this, but Sam Calagione, Dogfish Head founder, has a Discovery channel show coming up in the fall.

Beer is the drink of the masses. If you look into a glass of beer you can see the past, present and future of mankind. Cicero lauded it, Genghis Khan fought for it and now Discovery Channel celebrates it with a world premiere series, BREWED, exploring the culture, history and variety of beer.

Meet Sam Calagione: maverick entrepreneur, family man and owner of Dogfish Head Brewery in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. As an ambassador to the world of craft beer, Sam travels the world to experience what every culture brings to its own special brew.

In BREWED, Sam shows viewers the other side of the bottle, sharing the stories of beer sub-cultures as well as exploring life inside The Dogfish Head Brewery. BREWED goes behind the scenes at Dogfish Head as Sam’s merry band of creative brewmasters concoct new taste varieties.

“BREWED taps more than just kegs and barrels, it unlocks a fascinating history of beer making, showcasing the ingenuity and passion behind our love affair with those alluring suds and how it played a role in building civilizations,” said Clark Bunting, President and General Manager of Discovery Channel.

Running a successful business also requires inspiration, so BREWED hits the road for the ultimate beer tasting road trip. Along with archeologist and beer expert Pat McGovern, Sam sets out to recreate “ancient ales” that have been discovered at sites around the world from Egypt to Peru. He travels to Rome to research old world Italian beers as inspiration for a new site in New York with Mario Batali. A visit to New Zealand introduces the idea of making the “first tomato based beer.” And back home, Sam is tasked to come up with a commemorative beer called “Bitches Brew” to celebrate the 40th anniversary release of Miles Davis’ famous recording.

“Beer has always been my passion. It is so much more than what you see in the glass. I’m excited to share the diligence, daring and creativity that we pour into our work,” said Calagione.

"Brewed" sounds like a much watch show for all the beer lovers out there.

Charlie Fred and Ken's Bock

The newest Sierra Nevada 30th anniversary brew has hit the shelves in KC. This one, Charlie Fred and Ken's Bock is an Imperial Helles Bock and should be a welcome addition to any 4th of July or Canada Day celebration. I'll be celebrating Canada Day with a glass or 3 of it tonight.

I found mine at Lukas on 119th. Let us know where you're finding it so your fellow beer travelers can have a good holiday weekend as well.