Not many bars treat craft beer with the reverence The Old Toad shows. Over the years, the managers and student-servers of this venerable English pub have gone out of their way to teach Rochesterians about great beer, show what can be accomplished when airing beer and food, and highlighting some of the finest brewers in the country.

They did it again last night with Stone Fest. San Diego’s Stone Brewing Company is considered one of the finest craft brewers in America. Just mention the name Stone around beer dorks and watch them furtively crouch over so no one notices the growing bulge in their expand-o-waist pants.

The Toad really did it up with Stone. Four taplines were devoted to the uber-brewery’s beers, pumping out Stone Pale Ale, Double Bastard, 10th Anniversary IPA, and  2007 Old Guardian Barley Wine.

With the exception of the Pale Ale, these are big, explosive beers, uncompromising in the intensity of their flavor, and the skill with which they’re brewed is apparent at first sip. It’s almost like beer concentrate. The hop flavors dominate, I mean absolutely beat your tongue into submission, and yet there’s none of the sharp bitterness that makes beer unbalanced. Bitterness flaws are so common among barley wines that they’ve become an accepted part of the flavor profile, but the Stone Old GuardianI drank last night showed none of that.However, it was a year old, so the beer could have quite possibly rounded outwith cellaring.

The Pale Ale is rare in Western New York, and it’s the first Stone offering I’ve tried that didn’t wear the mantle of an ‘extreme’ beer (although many would argue the Stone IPA isn’t extreme either). It was refreshing in its restraint, tasting almost like a soft English pale ale instead of a hoppy American-style pale. Of course, I tasted the Pale Ale after the Double Bastard, so I’d lost all feeling in my tongue. Still, it was an eye-opening experience, showing a side of Stone I’d not yet seen.

Most of these delicious beers are ‘one and done’ for me. They’re just too much. As the night went on, though, it became evident that many of my fellow Stone fans didn’t share that problem. Still, everyone kept their pants on, and handled these huge, highly alcoholic beers with the dignity and restraint that craft beer deserves.

Sometimes, love is truly blind.

-Mark

Looks like Honeoye Falls-based Custom Brewcrafters is celebrating their 12th anniversary in style with the release of CB’s Abbey Ale. According to Head Brewer Jason Fox, it’s a Belgian-style dubbel using Trappist yeast and candi sugar for that signature Flanders abbey taste. As far as I know (I should have asked Fox this when I had him on the phone), this is the first Belgian style that Custom Brewcrafters has released to date.

You can get the CB’s Abbey at the brewery now, and it will soon show up at beer-oriened pubs around the city. Myhunch is that we’ll see it on cask from time to time as well.

Custom is also releasing their Oktoberfest beer next week. It’s always been a bit less traditional that most oktoberfests, with an iconoclastic hop bite and some ale-like fruitiness. Probably a good choice if you’re looking for a fest beer that bucks the malty lager trend.

-Mark

Once more under the tent
By Mark Tichenor and Bruce Lish

Nobody celebrates beer like the Germans, especially at this time of year. All over the world, ethnic Germans who’ve assimilated into various cultures will be donning funny clothes, slapping the soles of their shoes, and emitting shouts of “Heu! Heu! Heu!” as hundreds of versions of the unofficial German national festival get into swing.

That festival, of course, is Oktoberfest. And it’s the biggest beer festival in the world.

While the original festival in Munich is still the end-all, be-all of beer festivals, hundreds of Oktoberfests of varying quality will spring up all over the world. And while you may not be able to judge a festival’s worth by its proximity to Germany, you can certainly judge it by the presence of Oktoberfest beer.

Ah, the famed Festbier of Munich. Those who slag the German stuff as so much uniformly flavored light lager have obviously given it a lifelong miss. Caramel-colored, nutty, with a hearty, roasted malt body, Oktoberfest beer is every bit as complex as porter or pale ale, with hop bitterness replaced by malt’s slight sweet flavors.

While Oktoberfest beer is enjoyable in any setting, it’s best consumed under a tent, at a long communal table, with an oompah band and people inexplicably slapping the soles of their shoes. You’ll have a chance to do this yourself at the 21st annual Oktoberfest at Camp Eastman in Irondequoit, September 12-14 and September 19-21.

There’s just something about Oktoberfest that makes you want to, well, drink lots of beer. The Bavarian Germans recognize this and therefore serve Festbier in the traditional Mass glass. It’s one liter of malted goodness, just the right amount to convert the normally reserved Germans into Elvis-impersonating party animals, and put visiting Japanese tourists under the table.

We here in the USA tend to be a bit more prudish about portion size. While pitchers are generally available at Oktoberfests, they’re usually not considered to be individual servings. Still, the slightly stronger than average Oktoberfest beers are just the thing to relax you and make those leather pants with bib overalls seem a bit less ridiculous.

Of course, Bavaria is no longer the sole source of Oktoberfest beer. Independent American brewers like the Boston Beer Company (Samuel Adams) and F.X. Matt (Saranac) make notable examples. Even closer to home, this is the first year that the High Falls Brewing Company’s Dundee Oktoberfest is available in bottles.

Whatever the circumstances of your Oktoberfest beer enjoyment, be it on your patio, in a pub, or under a tent with some drunk chick yodeling in your ear, take a moment to reflect on the perfect beer for flavor, camaraderie, and the turning of the season.

Just don’t spill any on your Lederhosen. Those things shrink right up nice and snug.

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 meant to write about this before, but you know how things go. My first homebrew is a success, even after three months of neglectful aging in the closet.

Seeing as four other brewers watched me make it, and we used a few of Bruce’s carefully chosen ingredents, I named it ‘5 Cooks’. And since he jammed two fistfuls of Amarillo hops into the carboy at the last minute, creating a more bitter brew than the pale ale kit was supposed to create, I named it ‘Colonial Pale.’ It’s not as bitter as Imperial Pale Ale, but there’s defininitely the meddling, exploitative hand of a foreign power messing with it somehow.

So we have a slightly unbalanced, yet very flavorful ale with a sharp, bitter finish. I think even the UNYHA homebrewers would approve. Best of all, I’m now a real brewer, not just some guy who talks a bunch of shit all the time.

-Mark

Note: my review of Rochester’s Flower City Brew Fest is pending. Busy week at work. Hang tight.

As you undoubtedly know, the Flower City Brewers Fest takes place this Friday at Frontier Field in Glamorous Rochester, New York. The event is put on by the Rohrbach Brewing Company, and features most of Central and Western New York’s indie brewers, as well as some from further afield. Here’s a partial list of participants:

• Custom Brewcrafters
• High Falls Brewing
• Flying Bison
• Ithaca Beer Co.
• Rooster Fish Brewing Co.
• Brooklyn Brewery
• Southern Tier Brewing Co.
• Long Trail Brewing Co.
• Magic Hat Brewing Co.

There will, of course, be many more breweries gushing forth their wares, so come thirsty.

Rohrbach will be debuting it’s first two original Bruce Lish beers in over four years. As many readers know, Bruce combines a natural talent for brewing great beer with a love for uncommon and offbeat styles. I think he’s one of the best brewers in the state, perhaps beyond (which is why I let him hang out with me), and these surprise brews are going to knock off your collective socks.

My advice, show up to the festival early. It’s really popular, and can crowd up. Rohrbach has done its best to alleviate  crowding by using both the first base and third base concourses, as opposed to last year when the whole damn thing was crammed onto the third base side. This should shorten lines and increase enjoyment for everyone.

-Mark

A sour taste in our mouths
By Mark Tichenor and Bruce Lish

Looks like American brewers are growing bored with their hops.

Maybe it’s the skyrocketing prices, or perhaps it’s the realization that ‘extreme’ beers’ are taking bitterness way beyond the point of the human tongue’s ability to register that taste. Whatever the reason, indie beermakers are beginning to de-elevate hops from the loftiest stature, back into the realm of regular ol’ beer ingredients.

At any rate, they have a new toy to play with: a little guy called Brettanomyces. It’s a yeast species with the usually undesirable trait of creating ascetic acid, you know, that stuff that gives vinegar its flavor?

In the brewing and winemaking industries, Brett has mostly been considered a pest, floating around in the air, ready to contaminate the fragile fermenting liquid, and the very vessels in which they rest, and elaborate control measures were put in place to keep the microscopic bastards out of good, clean beverage-production facilities.

At least, that’s how it was regarded in the civilized world. In Belgium, where they’ll let any old thing land in their wort, Brett appeared to varying degrees in the flavor profiles of styles like Red Ale, Oude Bruin and Lambic. These are some of the most interesting and best beers in the world.

So it’s only natural that American brewers, with their adaptive abilities and near-pathological desire to experiment, would embrace the Brettanomyces yeast to create a range of beers that retained the best characteristics of their Belgian heritage while developing uniquely American traits.

Joe McBane, owner of the Rochester beer bar The Tap & Mallet, embraces sour ales. “Anything that pushes the envelope and gets people to try new beer styles is a good thing,” he says.

Thing is, the brewers are doing it all at once. Although some pioneers have been using Brett on this side of the pond for a while (Russian River started producing soured beers in 1999), the surge toward sour is occurring as a broad movement, a tidal wave of puckered mouths and smacking tongues which is beginning to break over the northeast.

We’re all for brewers experimenting in this way, using a novel ingredient to reinvent what beer can be, but when every brewery does it at once, like sorority girls synchronizing their cycles, it detracts somewhat from the originality of the thing. There is also, for the drinker, a diminished sense of discovery, like turning down a quaint European street only to find dozens of tourist boutiques hawking T-shirts.

This is exactly what happened with ‘extreme’ hoppy beers. A couple of brewers began a pissing contest over whose double IPA was the strongest and had the most units of bitterness, and suddenly a fad was born. It seemed that everyone with a kettle and a grain mill was putting out a tongue-puckering hop bomb. In fairness, some of these beers were (and still are) well balanced and delicious, but the majority were a product of a trend, one-dimensional and unapologetic about being the product of someone else’s dream, not the desires of the brewers producing them.

Will the same thing happen as brewers climb aboard the Sour Beer Bus? McBane doesn’t think so. “There’s a more limited acceptable flavor profile for sour than for bitter,” he explains. “People aren’t going to go as crazy for extremely sour beers as they did for extremely hoppy.”

We hope he’s right. While Belgian sour ales (Rodenbach Grand Cru, for example) represent a pinnacle of international brewing, we are relying on the sense of taste and restraint possessed by American brewers, and ultimately by their customers, to create brews that taste better poured in a goblet than sprinkled on a salad.

Ultimately, we’ll probably find a few real gems.

In Other Beers:

The 2008 Flower City Brewers’ Fest takes place on Friday, August 15th at Frontier Field from 6-10pm. Over 30 breweries from Western New York are participating for your tasting enjoyment. There’s also a stage containing bands, which you’ll blithely walk past on your way to more beer!

This is the second year for the annual festival at Frontier Field, and it’s improved over last year’s event in several ways. Chiefly, the entire concourse will be open instead of only the third-base side. This will cut down on crowding and allow easier access to the tasting tables and facilities.

Oh, and apparently there’s a pig roast. Yum.

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.

The East Coast does not lack for beer festivals during the summertime, but some events stand out from the rest. Ommegang Brewery’s annual Belgium Comes to Cooperstown festival is one of those great beer experiences, albeit with some disturbing undertones for the observant bystander.

It starts with the setting itself. The brewery is architecturally stunning, and sits on an enormous plot of open ground. A motley collection of tents dot the fields around the massive serving and entertainment pavilions, and everyone’s having a great time. Music plays from within nylon walls, frisbees go whipping past your head, and great beer is everywhere. This is before the tasting even starts.

You can tell how esteemed BCTC is in the indie beer industry by the breweries that turn up, some from as far away as California, and, well, Belgium. Stone, Russian River, Weyerbacher, Dogfish Head, most of the most renowned names in American brewing make sure to have a presence at this festival. It’s absolutely a Belgian beer junkie’s paradise.

We (I was pouring for the Rohrbach Brewing Company) set up at our designated spot, next to the Russian River booth. This was good because it gave us relatively free access to what many festivalgoers were expecting to be the best beers of the event. Ten minutes before the pouring began, the line in front of Russian River stretched beyond the bounds of the sampling tent and out into the naked sun. The line in front of our both, and that of Nantucket’s Offshore Ale Company next to us, consisted of Chris, a ski patrol/lifeguard hippie dude who’d volunteered to help pour.

This highlighted a strange dynamic I hadn’t really encountered at other beer festivals; Perhaps it was because of the big name breweries, or perhaps it was because most of the beer was so strong that people had to pick and choose, but many more obscure brewers were nearly ignored. While people would wait ten minutes for a sample of Russian River’s beers, we spent a fair amount of time pouring nothing, staring out at empty air, or sharing Rohrbach Belgian Blonde with the neighboring brewers. Is this the “Beer Advocate Effect?” Are beer lovers really ceasing to show curiosity for what small American brewers are making in order to go for the best-publicized, best-advertised craft breweries? If that’s the case, it’s an ironic mirroring of the way macro beer consumers make buying decisions on mainstream beer.

Another slightly unsettling trend was the obvious rise of American brewing’s new fad: sour beer. It seems some people got a taste of Rhodenbach, or one of the other Flemish ales soured with the Brettanomyces yeast, and now they’re doing to sour ale what they did to IPA for the past few years- going completely over the top with mouth-puckering acidity while completely ignoring the flavor characteristics that make beers like Rhodenbach taste so damn good.

After tasting the fourth consecutive beer that would taste better on a salad than in a glass, I began to grow a bit despondent about the ‘enlightened’ craft beer enthusiastic public. ‘They’re going to slurp this down by the hectolitre,’ I thought to myself. ‘They’re going to buy it, post about it on beer forums, and act like this caustic vinegar is the Ambrosia Sent From the Gods.’ Overhopped imperial IPAs will be forgotten as beer ‘connoisseurs’ brag to each other about how any ‘international sourness units’ can be had in their latest zymurlogical infatuation.

But those rumblings aside, the festival was filled with awesome beer and a mellow, fun vibe that extended well into the night, then into the morning. After hanging with the guys from Custom Brewcrafters and the gang from Smuttynose brewing, I staggered off to my tent, lulled to sleep by the pulsing rhythm of the band in the distance, and the half-gallon of Rohrbach Belgian Blonde in my tummy- the only defense against rude awakenings by bongo players and people randomly screaming as they succumbed to the nectars of the day.

-Mark