Last night’s Beer Social at the Tap and Mallet did not disappoint. A healthy crowd got to sample six IPAs from the USA and the UK, while learning about each from co-presenters Joe McBane and Steve Hodos.

The tasting table, ready to go

Featured were Belhaven Twisted Thistle IPA, Stone IPA,> Sixpoint Bengali Tiger, Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA, Wachusett Green Monsta Ale, and Meantime IPA. That’s a pretty good representation of the current IPA world, encompassing the north and south of Great Britain and the American east and west coasts.

I won’t go into individual tasting notes for each of these, but you could definitely tell the difference between the English and American Examples. Meantime and Belhaven lacked the fruity, floral sensory burst of the American IPAs, relying more on a grain-heavy, almost peaty flavor as counterpoint to their bitterness.

The Great Lakes Brewing News’ Steve Hodos shares his knowledge

Two nice touches made this tasting great. Each participant received two glasses, affording the opportunity to contrast one IPA directly against another, and switch back to differentiate flavor and aromatic notes. As Hodos explained, “Taste has no memory.”

The other high point was the sausage and cheese plate, served individually to each table. A mix of havarti, jarlsberg, port wine cheese, baguettes, pepperoni, grapes, apples, and some funky sausage that McBane apparently had to dig through a fitness center locker room to find accentuated the beers and gave tasters some ballast against the high alcohol content. I wish the Tap would offer this as an antipasto plate on their regular menu.

The audience actually listened to the knowledge!

My favorite: The Sixpoint Bengali Tiger. I really liked the way the brewer squeezed so much orangey/grapefruit citrus flavor out of his hops. The bright flavors, slightly warmed by the alcohol, seemed to bounce off the hop bitterness and over my palate. Bengali Tiger is dangerously enjoyable.

Oh, and I did not sample the Green Monsta. I will never sample the Green Monsta. Any beer that uses Red Sox/Fenway connotations in its name or its marketing will never pass my lips. As far as I’m concerned, it’s Beer Non Grata. We’ll just save it for the Chowds.

-Mark

…usually you wind up with a dead hooker rolled up in a carpet. But maybe not after a Super Bowl party. Wall Street guru Jim Cramer’s thestreet.com offers craft beer picks for the big game.

I’ll give ‘em the Southampton IPA as a decent bottled choice from a Downstate New York address, but Sam Adams Irish Red? Yeeech. It would be a better call to consider that the team is called the NEW ENGLAND Patriots and grab some Smuttynose Old Brown Dog from New Hampshire or a case of Vermont’s Otter Creek Copper Ale. These are two solid, delicious brews that aren’t too challenging for the occasional beer drinker, and still appeal to the craft beer lover.

Personally, I’ve always thought the idea of matching your beer to who’s in the Super Bowl kind of silly, but the concept makes for easy content in home living magazines and cheesy beer blogs. And just maybe the Wall Street Journal. Who really knows but the stockbrokers?

-Mark

Bruce and I will be heading up I-90 to Syracuse this Saturday to man the Rohrbach Brewing Company stand at the Central New York Brewers’ Fest.

This is the first craft beer festival of the year, and I’m excited as hell to get back into the swing of things. It’s really fun to share and talk about good beer with festival attendees, not to mention with the brewers and representatives from craft breweries throughout the Northeast.

The thing takes place at the New York State Fairgrounds. Admission is $25 in advance, $30 at the door. They give you a little cup and you just go around trying as much beer as is physically or mentally possible. Hope to see you there.

-Mark

People get this romantic notion about the Germans and their veneration for beer… with their special fancy beer law and their big-ass Mass glasses. But a lot of them treat beer with the type of indifference that only comes with not knowing the forest for the trees.

An article from today’s edition of Forbes.com talks about how German domestic beer sales declined by 2.7%. The German Brewers’ Association blames a rainy summer which put the kybosh on afternoons in the Biergarten, as well as a general health- consciousness for which the stool-inspecting Germans have grown notorious.

But what’s most disturbing to me is the article’s mention that the German propensity for mixing beer with fruit juice or soft drinks is becoming more widespread. Really, Hans, what is the freakin’ point of having the freakin’ Reinheitsgebot if you’re just gonna dump half a liter of apple juice into your Bitburger? And how does diluting one’s beer with a drink full of high-fructose corn syrup seem like a healthy choice to anyone?

Maybe we Yanks will benefit from this. The brewers of Germany have to find their market somewhere. If they can’t do it at home, more of them just might look to the thirsty huddled masses in the USA.

-Mark

I just learned about the existence of a band called Beercraft, which the astute reader will notice is also the name of this blog. We’re no affiliated, but a band of beer lovers that writes songs about beer and plays brew pubs is a worthy endeavor indeed.

Also, check out Todd from the band’s beer-related blog, Krausen Rising

By Mark Tichenor and Bruce Lish

Custom Brewcrafters of Honeoye Falls has been a staple area brewery since 1997. During their decade of existence, Custom’s beers and business model of brewing house beers for bars has been embraced by pub owner and thirsty patron alike. Today, the brewery serves well over a hundred accounts in Rochester, Buffalo, and the Finger Lakes.

In addition to that, Custom formulates and brews its own line of craft beers, such as the delicious, onyx-colored Double Dark Cream Porter and Wee Heavy, both of which issue forth from numerous taps across the region.

As the business grew, shoehorning all that beer through CB’s original Brewhouse on Paper Mill Street became something of a challenge. Fortunately one thing Honeoye Falls has in abundance is available land. Currently, the company is building a new brewhouse and retail area that will afford substantially more space for brewing, in-house sales, and expansion.

“We want to have room to do signature beers and one-offs,” explains Jason Fox, Custom’s Head Brewer. “We’ll also want to be bottling, which requires a lot of space.” The brewery will also offer many more taps for walk-in retail business and a function room for conferences and events.

The future bottle availability of two of the brewery’s flagship beers, English Pale Ale and CB’s Double Dark Cream Porter, will do much to increase regional availability. It will also demonstrate that Custom Brewcrafters is a true craft brewery, not just a third-party producer of vanity beers.

Once the new brewhouse is up and running (planned for this coming April), Fox wants to use the extra capacity to push the envelope with respect to beer. “I like beer to be balanced, but within the balance I like to play around.” That yen for experimentations shows up in several CB’s beers, from the coffee-infused Canaltown Brown Ale, to the five-spiced Christmas Ale.

Fox also speaks of his interest in historical brewing methods, and his desire to implement them with authenticity. In 2006, a number of breweries across the country celebrated the 300^th anniversary of Ben Franklin’s birth by brewing beer using one of the statesman’s old recipes. In his quest for authenticity, Fox hooked up with the brewing school at the University of Sunderland in the UK to make sure his methods, ingredients, and conditions were representative of Franklin’s times.

Fox plans to continue that awareness of today’s beer as a descendant of brewing tradition. While CB’s continues to create popular specialty beers for the areas eating and drinking establishments, it’s in their own beer line where the great potential for discovery lies.

In other beers

Join Joe McBane, owner of Rochester’s Tap and Mallet, and Steve Hodos of the Great Lakes Brewing News, for an IPA tasting session Wednesday, January 30, at the Tap and Mallet, 381 Gregory Street, Rochester, NY.

As you quaff your way through both English and American versions of the style, McBane and Hodos will explain the colonial seafaring history of this rugged beer, as well as how IPA has evolved in America. Oh, and they’ll give you cheese and stuff.

The tasting costs $9.Originally, tickets were going to be sold but now it’s on a first-come, first-serve basis.

This is the first in a series of monthly tastings at the Tap. McBane is planning one for the final Wednesday of every month. More than just a gulpfest, the Tap & Mallet’s tastings are meant to inform, educate, and draw participants deeper into the nature of beer and how it intertwines with our culture.

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.

Anheuser-Busch is hosting a series of beer dinners at fine restaurants. According to this article from the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch:

On a muggy night last September, Ruth’s Chris Steak House in Clayton brought out the fine white tablecloths for a $100 Anheuser-Busch beer dinner for 60 registered guests. Menus laid out seven courses of haute cuisine: coconut shrimp and Michelob, beef tenderloin and caramelized onions with Michelob Amber Bock, and Caesar salad with Budweiser in pilsner glasses.

Now I appreciate that A-B is trying to get people reacquainted with beer as a dining companion, but it seems that getting Budweiser with your salad is precisely the thing that would drive people to choose wine.

Even if it does come in a fancy-schmancy pilsner glass.

This weeks’ print column is on Custom Brewcrafters of Honeoye Falls, NY. They’re building a brand new brewhouse from the ground up, which should be finished by April. The place is friggin’ huge.

the new brewhouse rising above the frozen tundra

The brewhouse will feature increased retail space, and lots of room for expansion

Meanwhile, brewing goes on at their current Honeoye Falls location. Custom services a couple hundred accounts, and brews individual beers for many of them.

Brewer Greg Smith gets steamed

Head Brewer Jason Fox and friends

The result of a hard day’s work. Some cows will be lucky tomorrow

Personally, I’m looking forward to more house-branded beers, now that Custom will have the space to make them. I’ve always felt their  business model of brewing house beers for bars and restaurants precluded them from making the best beer they could, since they often seem to have to cater to the input of bar owners and mass-market beer consuming patrons. Now that Custom will be able to readily formulate, produce and sell more beer, I’m hoping the brewers will take this opportunity to really show their chops and give us Rochester beer lovers something to be proud of.

-Mark

Vermont’s Magic Hat is one of the Northeast’s more successful craft brewers, and one of the best at penetrating the age 21-34 market, thanks to their light, apricot-tinged #9.

Personally, I’ve always found them a bit cutesy and over-precious, and sometimes I think their marketing ability eclipsed their beer in quality. This put them off my radar screen for a while. But a good beer reviewer never closes doors. I had the bartender dispense me out a pint of Matty O’Connor’s Irish Stout.

This is a fantastic beer. It’s inky black, as an Irish stout is supposed to be, with a complex roast malt flavor- a bit of coffee, maybe a touch of vanilla, and a hearty nuttiness. O’Connor’s also avoids the pitfall of being too porterlike, carrying the flavor through with the slightly metallic dryness one expects from a good example of the style.

The head was a bit more brown and less persistent than I’m used to, but who cares? Magic Hat’s latest Irish stout will be a session beer of mine for as long as I can find it on draft. Even if visiting their website is like watching Monty Python on acid.

-Mark

India pale ale is one of the most popular craft beer styles. Nearly forgotten a couple of decades ago, Homebrewers’ interest in IPA’s unique history revived the type in microbreweries across the nation. Today, IPA is an artisan beer staple.

Join Joe McBane, owner of Rochester’s Tap and Mallet, and Steve Hodos of the Great Lakes Brewing News, for an IPA tasting session Wednesday, January 30, at the Tap and Mallet, 381 Gregory Street, Rochester, NY.

As you quaff your way through both English and American versions of the style, McBane and Hodos will explain the colonial seafaring history of this rugged beer, as well as how IPA has evolved in America. Oh, and they’ll give you cheese and stuff.

Tickets are $9. Only a limited number will be sold and I can’t see this tasting not selling out. You have to go to the Tap and Mallet to buy the tickets, but if an extra trip to the Tap is an inconvenience not a pleasure, then you have no business at the tasting.

This is the first in a series of monthly tastings at the Tap. McBane is planning one for the final Wednesday of every month. More than just a gulpfest, the Tap & Mallet’s tastings are meant to inform, educate, and draw participants deeper into the nature of beer and how it intertwines with our culture.