Here comes the Edmund Fitzgerald
By Mark Tichenor and Bruce Lish

Cleveland, Ohio, is a much-maligned city and the butt of many an American joke. Whether it’s their toxic sludge stream of a river spontaneously combusting, or their perennially underperforming football team… spontaneously combusting, there always seems to be something for the rest of us to pick on.

But one rather hazily-recalled weekend in 2006 taught us the truth about C-town. It’s no longer the anus of industrial America, the people will surprise you with their friendliness and hospitality, and yes, great things are still produced in Cleveland.

We refer, specifically, to the beer of the Great Lakes Brewing Company, one of the USA’s upper-echelon independent breweries and, until recently, a destination beer for Rochesterians traveling to points west. Only in recent months did the brewery expand, increasing production capacity to the point where they could reliably ship product to the Finger Lakes region.

“The brewery knew they had a lot of people talking about the beer in the Upstate area,” explains John Mula, High End Brand Manager for Lake Beverage, the company that distributes Great Lakes in Rochester. He adds that Wegmans and the Macgregor’s restaurant chain had been trying to get the beer in stock for a while. “We get a ton of feedback from comment cards saying ‘thank you for bringing this beer here.’”

Mula also points out that the brewery is fanatical about freshness. “This beer has the shortest allowed shelf life I’ve ever seen, 90 days,” he says. “ For him, this is both a blessing and a curse. It guarantees freshness for the customer, but taxes the distributor and retailers to sell their inventory within the allowed cycle.

So far, however, that doesn’t seem to be much of a problem. Mula has run sampler sessions at beer festivals and in bars and restaurants around town, but the beer is already popular due to its reputation.

The Edmund Fitzgerald Porter is probably Great Lakes’ best-known beer. Its smooth, roasted malt character, heavy body, and slightly dry finish make the porter an excellent seasonal choice, almost a “comfort beer” that insulates against the damp and chill of approaching winter.

Our personal pick is the Great Lakes Dortmunder Gold, a straw-colored, somewhat sweet brew with a medium body and mild but quite noticeable hop finish. It’s brewed to the Dortmunder Export style, which, unsurprisingly, originates in the German city of Dortmund.  Think Pilsner but slightly less bitter and a bit heavier in the mouthfeel.

As an admitted hophead, Mula’s favorite is the Commodore Perry IPA.  Its standout piney, floral aroma leads into the prominent hop presence and finish. Still the Commodore Perry is reined in by tradition, and doesn’t overwhelm like so many American IPAs do. The object here is balance, not extreme bitterness.

The Great Lakes line also includes Burning River Pale Ale, Elliot Ness Lager, and Blackout Stout (just because we didn’t write about them in detail doesn’t mean they’re not awesome).  Various seasonal offerings will show up from time to time as well.

Great Lakes beer is a symbol of the new Cleveland, and a worthy export to our area. Maybe they could ship it to the port of Rochester in a brightly painted lake boat, the brewery’s logo prominently emblazoned on the side.

Wait, maybe not. We all remember what happened to the Edmund Fitzgerald, and do we really need Gordon Lightfoot droning on about beer?

Bruce is a certified beer judge and commercial brewer. Mark owns a laptop and likes beer. For more on beer, check out the beercraft blog, updated regularly, at http:://www.beercraftsite.com. Send your questions, suggestions, or comments to beercraft@rochester.rr.com.

Monty’s Korner, the low-key pub on the corner of Alexander St. and East Ave. in ROchester, NY, is facing a crisis that could see its doors closed forever.

in addition to normal lease rate increases, the owner of the property has instituted a punitive “common area maintenance fee” on all the tenants of the building (not just the bar) that effictively doubles the rent. If things stand as they are, the Korner will have no choice but to close its doors.

This means that the Korner’s sister bar, Monty’s Krown, will be in grave danger as well. The Krown is not much of a moneymaker and depends on the Korner, but it is a social haven to many, including musicians, artists, business owners and IT guys; the “non bar-scene” bar.

This really sucks. I’ve known some of the staff of these two bars for over a decade, as friends and publicans. I remember when the Korner’s original owner died, and the staff worked for free to ensure the survival of the two bars. These aren’t nightspots or meat markets. These are homes.

I have no idea if the Korner has any legal recourse. I’m kinda hoping some of you blog readers might. Any advice, left as a comment or emailed, would be appreciated. Not just by me, but by Katy, Jen, Leslie, Kim, Sarah, Liz, Liz, Tom, Brian, and the rest of the people who’ve given a lot of themseleves because they loved going to work among friends.

-Mark

I’m not crazy about their motives, but I can’t help but smile as I read that Utah has banned foo-foo fruity alcohol drinks from grocery stores and convenience shops due to their appeal to underage drinkers. The Mormon Capital of the world is also mandating that all alcopops carry a special label, maybe a skull and crossbones or something.

I say this because we’re heading toward the Holiday season, and every year lawmakers in search of perpetual reelection get their dander up and try to ban the Bad Elf series of ultra high-end, extremely expensive imported holiday ales. The reasoning: The cartoony labels appeal to minors. Never mind the fact that mainstream beer is half the cost, more readily attainable by minors, and less challenging in flavor. Or that Alcopops such as Smirnoff Ice or Bacardi Breezers appeal to the youthful palates raised on Kool-Aid and “Sunny D”. It’s the craft beer that’s the fucking bad guy.

I’m glad a state liquor board finally sees the elephant in the room. Even if it’s the Cult of Utah.

Monday evening at my local, around 5:30pm. It’s not crowded, and I know almost everyone in here. I shake hands, exchange some chitchat, then grab a stool. Leaning across the bar, I pick my pint from today’s taps.

One of the greatest appeals of an American pub is that it’s the grown-up version of the ice cream shop. You have to choose from a lot of flavors, knowing you can’t really go wrong, but intent on selecting the taste that willprovide the absolute maximum of enjoyment. As in a Baskin-Robbins, a good pub will give you a taste; they know that, even after a full ten hours at work, this might be your most important decision of the day.

Today, I go English, picking a Fuller’s London Porter, and my eyes get a bit wider as the bartender serves me my pint of black beer. A bit of cream-colored head just makes it over the rim and down the side of the glass. I raise my glass to my barmates, the executive chef of a well-known area restaurant and his wife, as well as my “Co-Author” Bruce.

With each silky sip of my Fuller’s, I sinkmore deeply into my environment. It’s sweet, full-bodied, a bit nutty, with none of the astringency in the finish that turns me off to many porters. It’s a poignant reminder that England is the birthplace of some very impressive beer styles. Compared to many American interpretations of porter, the Fuller’s London Porter is… softer around the edges; less brash, with subtler flavor. The sweetness of the malt and the hops’ bitterness don’t crash against each other. Each sip is a treat. Maybe this is the perfect beer for the perfect moment.

If only there were more of those.

-Mark

Well, it’s time for one of the best beer festivals in the country, the BeerAdvocate Belgian Beer Festival in Boston, Massachusetts.

Bruce will be attending, pouring three of the beers he brewed for the Rohrbach Brewing Company. I will not be attending. Because my wife has planned a Finger Lakes wine tour for us. And she was incredibly attached to the date of Saturday, September 27. So instead of taking part in one of the great beer fests as an exhibitor, I’ll be doing something we can do any friggin’ weekend. Awesome.

My car, however, is making the trip. Bruce is using the Honda Element to carry his kegs. In the meantime, I’m driving his smelly-ass diesel VW Golf. Christ, all that thick black smoke and those fumes; It’s like driving the nation of Romania.

If you didn’t prepurchase tickets to this festival, you’re fucked, but be advised that some of the world’s great brewers will be out on the prowl in Boston’s finer beer bars (Bukowski’s over by the Boylston Street Hilton seems to be a favorite hangout), so maybe you can talk beer with the pros.

For my part, all I can do is point you to my take on last year’s festival and dream about everything I will not get to taste this time around.

I hope my wife doesn’t read this; at least not until after the wine tour.

-Mark

A brewer/scientist at CalPoly has successfully activated, and brewed beer with, 45 million year old yeast. He says it’s spicy.  I wonder if there’s a “born-on” date on his bottles?

Something sweet and strong
By Mark Tichenor and Bruce Lish

It is time once again for fair summer to furl her golden sails, giving way to the languid, melancholy embrace of fall. Ok, enough poetry, let’s talk about beer.

Given the change of the season, you’re probably expecting us to drone on about harvest ales and fall seasonals. Well too bad. This week, we’re going to discuss Scotch ale, a year-round style that just happens to be perfect for autumn.

“Wee Heavy,” as Scotch ale is also called, is a sweet, chewy, high-alcohol style that warms you and fills you up. Hop bitterness is usually low, probably because hops traditionally don’t do so well in the Scottish climate.

While characteristics can vary from brewery to brewery, the common traits that make up the Scotch Ale style include a dark brownish, color from roasted malt, little detectable hop bitterness or aroma, and carmelization caused by a long boiling time, which gives Wee Heavy its distinct sweet, earthy flavor. These flavor traits make scotch ale a good choice for people who haven’t cultivated a taste for more bitter beers.

The classic example of the style is McEwans, which comes over to us direct from Edinburgh.  It’s a deep brown, serious beer. You can taste the alcohol in every sip, but it mellows into a toffee finish.

Unsurprisingly, this is a favorite style for American Indie brewers to make. Rohrbach Scotch Ale has been a staple in the Rochester, NY craft beer scene since 1993, and it remains the brewery’s best-selling beer.

Rohrbach Scotch bucks the trend a bit. The taste and aroma are pretty complex, a little smoky, with a hint of espresso. It’s on the dry side, with a light but evident hop character, yet that doesn’t clash with a slight sweetness in the finish.

Middle Ages Brewing, in sunny Syracuse, NY, also makes a fine Scotch ale. Kilt Tilter clocks in at a whopping 9% ABV, and balances all that strength with a robust, nutty body. There’s a hint of butterscotch and plenty of caramel with a pleasant, creamy consistency.

Dozens more Scotch ales dot beer store shelves in the area. We’d encourage you to try them all, just not at the same time, lest you, dear drinker, end up caramelized as well.

In Other Beers
The High Falls Brewery is holding weekend adult hayrides throughout October to promote Dundee Oktoberfest beer. “We wanted a fun way to bring the country to the city,” explains High Falls’ Jennifer McCauley.

The hayrides, which will take place every Saturday in October, begin at Abilene, on Liberty Pole Way, with a 6:30pm beer and brat party. At 8pm, the horse-drawn haycarts will move out, stopping at Salinger’s, Monty’s Korner, The Old Toad, Acme Pizza, Oxford’s and Jeremiahs. The carts will run all night, so you can get hop on and hop off as you like.

The pre-sale price is $35, which includes four drink vouchers good for any Dundee beer at any stop along the route. You can also join up with the hayride in progress.

Bruce is a certified beer judge and commercial brewer. Mark owns a laptop and likes beer. For more on beer, check out the beercraft blog, updated regularly, at http:://www.beercraftsite.com. Send your questions, suggestions, or comments to beercraft@rochester.rr.com.

I’ve been heralding the Rochester Beer Renaissance for quite some time now. 2007-2008 marked an explosion in craft and import beer availability, variety, and customer enlightenment. To mangle the words of Winston Churchill: Never before has so much been available to so many who actually knew how good it was. But business is business, and because of that we Rochester beer lovers are a bit worse off.

but the sheer impersonal machinations of business have put a bit of the dark ages into our Rennaissance. Beer commonly gets to you, dear consumer, via the three-tier system; a brewermakes the beer, a distributor brings it to the retail points, and they in turn sell it to you. These distributors handle dozens, sometimes hundreds of brands, and often lack the sheer manpower to give each individual brand the attention its creators and consumers would like. Instead, they focus on their best-sellers at the expense of lighter volume movers.

Beer Lover’s Paradise was the distributor that brought many of the rarest and most interesting beers to Rochester. Now that they’ve been sold to the much larger, Syracuse-based T.J. Sheehan (primarily an Anheuser-Busch distributor), many of those beers are disappearing as publicans’ stocks run dry.

Last night, I had my last Jever Pils at the Tap and Mallet. Chris, the bartender, expressed doubt about ever getting Jever again.

Now Sheehan does distribute craft beers, and some damn good ones. I know the sales guy and he’s a good egg who loves good beer, but there’s no denying that  the distributor level is the choke point that can make or murder the craft beer movement. Without them, bar and store owners and breweries must develop dozens of individual arrangements in a process that’s simply to cumbersome for establishments that carry more than a few brands.

I guess my point is, go out and find great beer. Enjoy it, but don’t take it for granted. You never know when you’ve tasted the last drops of a brew you love.

-Mark

It’s taken forever, but beer from Cleveland’s Great Lakes Brewing Company is now available on the shores of Lake Ontario as well. It’s for sale at Hegedorn’s, Beers of the World, and finer pubs throughout the Rochester area. My pick: The Great Lakes Dortmunder Gold. It’s got plenty of body, yet enough of a “quaffability factor” to refresh as well.

GLDG is currently on draft at the Tap & Mallet, but probably not for too long. I’ll do my part to assist in its disappearance.

-Mark

Homebrewers can be a competitive bunch. Some challenge themselves to recreate classic styles or replicate well-known commercial beers. Others constantly strive to invent something new. And many enter competitions that resemble dog shows, but with beer.

At these events, entries are judged by a panel and prizes are awarded acordingly. But not just anyone can be a beer judge. Nope. You have to take a course, and it’s freakin’ hard!

Beer judges are certified through the BJCP, which stands for Beer Judge Certification Program, which offers a comprehensive exam on beer styles. To pass the test, candidates must know their stlye guidelines inside and out, and be able to identify beers and the individual flavor components theirein by taste alone.

Let’s take a look at exactly how pedantic the BJCP can be. Here’s the complete style guidline for American wheat ale:

Aroma: Low to moderate grainy wheat or rye character. Some malty sweetness is acceptable. Esters can be moderate to none, although should reflect American yeast strains. The clove and banana aromas common to German hefeweizens are inappropriate. Hop aroma may be low to moderate, and can have either a citrusy American or a spicy or floral noble hop character. Slight crisp sharpness is optional. No diacetyl.

Appearance: Usually pale yellow to gold. Clarity may range from brilliant to hazy with yeast approximating the German hefeweizen style of beer. Big, long-lasting white head.

Flavor: Light to moderately strong grainy wheat or rye flavor, which can linger into the finish. Rye versions are richer and spicier than wheat. May have a moderate malty sweetness or finish quite dry. Low to moderate hop bitterness, which sometimes lasts into the finish. Low to moderate hop flavor (citrusy American or spicy/floral noble). Esters can be moderate to none, but should not take on a German Weizen character (banana). No clove phenols, although a light spiciness from wheat or rye is acceptable. May have a slightly crisp or sharp finish. No diacetyl.

Mouthfeel: Medium-light to medium body. Medium-high to high carbonation. May have a light alcohol warmth in stronger examples.

Overall Impression: Refreshing wheat or rye beers that can display more hop character and less yeast character than their German cousins.

Comments: Different variations exist, from an easy-drinking fairly sweet beer to a dry, aggressively hopped beer with a strong wheat or rye flavor. Dark versions approximating dunkelweizens (with darker, richer malt flavors in addition to the color) should be entered in the Specialty Beer category. THE BREWER SHOULD SPECIFY IF RYE IS USED; IF NO DOMINANT GRAIN IS SPECIFIED, WHEAT WILL BE ASSUMED.

Ingredients: Clean American ale yeast, but also can be made as a lager. Large proportion of wheat malt (often 50% or more, but this isn’t a legal requirement as in Germany). American or noble hops. American Rye Beers can follow the same general guidelines, substituting rye for some or all of the wheat. Other base styles (e.g., IPA, stout) with a noticeable rye character should be entered in the Specialty Beer category (23).

That’s one. For the record, there are something like 80 styles to memorize by sight, smell, taste and mouthfeel.

Most people don’t undertake the arduous journey to beer judgedom alone. They study in groups. Membership in the Upstate New York Homebrewers’ Association (UNYHA) gets you into their BJCP certification study group, which meets once a month to focus on a particular category, covering several individual styles. You get to drink beer, talk about beer, and share thoughts and impressions.

Sure, it’s a tough road, but, much as is the case with the Bar Exam or a Ph.D. dissertation defense, great rewards await in the end. It might be the academic’s choice for drinking one’s way to a more fulfilling life.

And no, beer judges don’t make any money.

-Mark