new york

Beer tasting still a game of hit and miss

Trying different beers can sometimes be a game of hit and miss. It can be easy to spot an off-flavoured beer and you’re within your rights to send it back. But what do you do when you get a beer that’s just plain bad? If the beer’s on draught, you might try before you buy. Sadly, this is not the case with packaged beer. Some staff might try to dissuade you from ordering it in the first place or occasional some might offer to replace it, taking the sales hit in the process.

Beer enthusiasts might check ratebeer.com or untappd for reviews but that’s too much work. Often you just trust the establishment that the beers on offer are good, all the more so when their beer menu is limited and the rest of the drinks menu is carefully selected. This opens the possibility of one being misled as a fair few places show less interest in their beers as they do with wines, whiskeys and other handpicked small batch spirits. This happened to me a few weeks ago in an award-wining restaurant in New York City.

When you’re away, you want to try as much local beers as possible. I had been drinking my own fair share of Brooklyn Brewery beers and I even eschewed aged-Orval (accidentally, due to the delay in shipping it stateside) on the menu. Instead, I opted for Kuka Coffee & Cream Stout by Andean Brewing Company. The brewery is located a few wiles west of the city on the far side of the Hudson River. It may be pretty local but the Kuka range of beers pride themselves in using Andean ingredients, with maca root (an aphrodisiac, apparently) found in all of their beers.

Kuka Coffee & Cream Stout (6% abv) pours black with a garnet tinge. It has a fairly limp, tan head – not a great advertisement for the powers of the maca root. The beer contains Brazilian coffee and lactose so it comes as no surprise that the nose is of coffee and a dusting of powdered sugar. The sweetness is there at the start. Unfortunately the body is too thin and fails to mellow the roast coffee.

The beer’s far too astringent and quickly overpowers the carbonation and the lactose. The sugars remain on the lips but this beer finishes harshly. I didn’t finish this beer. That says something. In fact, I quickly moved on to the wine. It goes to show that beer tasting is hit and miss. While thankfully it’s more hit than miss, there’s still a few disappointing beers out there. I still can’t get over why fine dining establishments and upscale bars don’t show more respect to the beers they stock.

Brews International

Andean Brewing Company, Blauvelt, Brooklyn Brewery, Hudson River, Kuka Coffee & Cream Stout, Kuka Coffee and Cream Stout, Maca root, new york, Orval, Rockland County

World Press Freedom Day in Brooklyn and elsewhere

Today is World Press Freedom Day, a United Nations backed initiative to mark freedom of press and calls on all governments to respect free speech and expressionism. Sadly in 2015, attacks are still taking place on members of the fourth, and increasingly on the fifth, estate. These rights must be continued to be protected today as much as people fought for them in years past.

We should fully appreciate the risk journalists take in covering stories. Veronica Guerin will long live in the Irish consciousness and there’s a wonderful tribute to her in the Newseum in Washington, DC. Journalists are daily taking risks to draw our attention to issues that are occurring long from our doorsteps.

Brooklyn Brewery, a member of the Class of ’88 craft beer start-ups, is a company that actively recognises this. It’s hardly surprising given that co-founder Steve Hindy was one-time Middle East correspondent for Associated Press in the early 1980s. It was during this time that he picked up the home-brewing bug. It was a popular pastime amongst diplomats based in dry countries. I’ve come across Irish engineers based in Saudi Arabia who are keen Brewers because what else would they drink. Apparently they’ve become quite adept at in their words “converting” non-alcoholic beers into sometime supposedly passable.

Back in the US, home-brewing eventually led to Hindy to giving up the journalism game and start the brewery with Brooklyn neighbour Tom Potter. The brewery’s growth is an interesting story, including being criticised for contract brewing, Milton Glaser, launching Sierra Nevada in New York and giving Garrett Oliver a vehicle to unleash his talent on a global scale. These are covered in two books by Hindy, Beer School (with Tom Potter) and The Craft Beer Revolution. The latter is also Hindy’s take on the craft beer revolution and includes a number of interesting insights into the personalities, events and controversies that marked the last 40 years of the US craft brewing era.

He may no longer be a journalist but Hindy still tries to do his bit. He’s been known to give talks on the role of foreign correspondents and participate in charity and other fund-raising initiatives. For example, he hosts War Correspondents at the Brooklyn Brewery. It’s an annual series of talks to raise money for RISC (Reporters Instructed in Saving Colleagues), which provides free advanced first aid training to independent conflict reporters, photographers and filmmakers.

So for this World Press Freedom Day, I’ll raise a glass to journalists everywhere (even if I don’t always agree with what some of you write) with an appropriate beer for the occasion. What else could it be but Brooklyn Lager, a beer that people may overlook today but it helped win over a lot of people to craft beer. I even remember trying it a good few years back in a dingy bar inside New York’s Penn Station.

The beer pours polished copper. It has light floral and lemon notes on the nose. The flavour is earthy and herbal. Grassy notes are kept to a minimum. There’s healthy dose of bitterness both on tasting and in the finish. The malt backbone keeps the bitterness from getting away from itself. It’s a beer that’s crying out to have with a good club sandwich and chips.

Beer history/culture, Reviews

brooklyn, brooklyn beer school, Brooklyn Brewery, craft beer revolution, Garrett Oliver, new york, newseum, Sierra Nevada, Steve Hindy, tom potter, united nations, veronica guerin, World press freedom day

For the rest of July the outlook is bitter

The Porterhouse is back with its latest festival. This time it’s the IPA Festival, which runs over ten days in July starting on Thursday. With predictions of a heat wave on the way, what could be beer than a festival celebrating pale ales and IPAs.

The festival will see many familiar beers putting in an appearance on their rolling bank of guest taps such as the erstwhile citra-packed Torpedo from Sierra Nevada, its archetypal Pale Ale and Ruthless Rye. Founders’ All day IPA, Centennial IPA and its Pale Ale will be there, along with Flying Dog’s Pale Ale and Snakedog IPA. England will be represented by Camden Town Brewery and Thornbridge. Camden, like Founders has been making inroads into the Irish drinking-scene in recent months and its Pale Ale will be served. Derbyshire’s Thornbridge will be represented by its black IPA Wild Raven, the stunning Jaipur, the Nelson Sauvin infused Kipling and Chiron, which is wonderful when fresh. Festival goers can also expect to taste Twin Peals, its collaboration brew with Sierra Nevada. Rumours are circulating that Hippocrates’ Purge, a summer ale with elderflower and Spanish orange blossom honey will be available on cask. Italy will be represented by much-acclaimed Birra del Borgo (My Antonia anyone?) and ReAle will be putting in an appearance. Irish variants will consist of Eight Degrees’ Full Irish (in the running for Beoir beer of the year) and Galway Hooker.

Some of the most eagerly awaited beers will be from Yorkshire’s Magic Rock Brewing brewer of the excellent Cannonball (think pine, tropical fruits and some sweetness), their flagship IPA but also look out for their double IPA (Human Cannonball) and triple IPA Un-human Cannonball, which is released annually. During the Porterhouse festival, customers can experience the following beers from Magic Rock Brewery on cask: Ringmaster (3.9% original pale ale); Carnival (4.3%, golden summer ale); and Great Alphonso (5.6% Mango pale ale).

It wouldn’t be a Porterhouse festival without them launching a special brew. However, Dublin Pale Ale is not just a festival special but a new regular offering for their five Irish bars and their London and New York outlets. It’s styled as an “Irish-style pale ale” (one of those descriptors that provokes debate amongst beer geeks). So what’s it like?

Dublin Pale Ale pours clean and clear copper, an appearance that is very much at home in The Porterhouse Temple Bar. It’s earthy with light citrus notes on the nose. The carbonation is typical of kegged pale ales. It’s in the taste and the finish that this beer gets started. Notes of orange and lemon meld into a dry biscuit and an assertive bitter finish. At 4.2% this would be a good session full-bodied beer for hopheads looking for an Irish bitter equivalent of an All Day IPA (minus the pine). This beer is the sibling of Hophead, which is described as a beer “beyond the pale” and hopped with Cascade and Centennial. Dublin Pale Ale, however, is billed as a beer “within the pale” (even though it’s going to be available across the group) and it’s hopped with European varieties, namely Styrian Goldings and the high-alpha acid beast that is Admiral. Hopefully they’ll go on to produce a cask version of this beer.

No doubt this festival will prove popular. Let’s face it hoppy beers sell. I have no doubt the new beers on offer will be in high demand but also the festival will give us the opportunity to be reacquainted with old-favourites as fresh as possible.

Festivals, Reviews

Craft Beer and Spirits festival by the Porterhouse

On 10 April, the Porterhouse Brewing Company kicked off its Craft Beer and Spirits festival. Over the course of a seventeen day period, people paying custom to any of the Porterhouse bars will be able to enjoy a fresh look at Ireland’s craft brewers and distillers. It’s increasingly common to see beer and spirits events being twinned. Of course the Porterhouse has a significant foothold in both the beer and spirits markets. One also couldn’t fail to notice that the launch event coincided with the publication of research by the newly established Irish Whiskey Association showing that its sector alone will invest over €1 billion in Ireland in the next decade.

On the beer front, the festival incorporates both draught and bottled beers from across Ireland’s craft scene. One can expect to see breweries such as Rascals, N17 Brewery, Kinnegar, Metalman, Hilden, Galway Hooker, O’Hara’s, Trouble Brewing, Mountain Man and Kinsale making an appearance at different times during the festival. Punters can take it old-school and check the blackboards on the walls of the bars or the individual ones under the row of guest taps for what’s pouring. There will be limited edition offerings too (not necessarily festival exclusives, however). I got to try Unite Pale Ale, the Irish version of the collaboration brew for International Women’s Day. Brewed down in Metalman, this 4% session ale had a good citrus bite to it.

Naturally, the Porterhouse had its own offerings for the festival. Making a welcome return is Peter Mosley’s excellent Chocolate Truffle Stout and timely too, given that the festival straddles Easter. This drinks like one of those very expensive and luxurious hot chocolate drinks. There’s a rich powdery taste, reminiscent of the dusting around Belgium chocolate truffle (suppose it’s not just a clever name). It has a smooth finish, with dark chocolate notes being restrained by the richness. Also on draught will be their Celebration Stout, a 7% stout matured in whiskey casks, and matching the overall theme of the festival, available on draught. I must admit that I still have a few bottles of this in my beer cellar, put away for a special occasion.

The festival will be occurring right across the by seven pubs in the Porterhouse family: Parliament Street, Temple Bar, Nassau Street, Glasnevin, Bray, Cork, Covent Garden, London and Financial District New York. There will also be beer and spirits tastings held throughout the festival and to find out more, it’s best to check out their social media channels.

Beer business, Festivals

Tag: new york