Bruce and I have been interviewed, and we’re on the Internet. Dem Jones from radio station 98.9 “The Buzz” grabbed us on Inauguration Day to get our thoughts on Ommegang’s ‘Obamagang’ Belgian Brown Ale.

Man, am I really that ugly? It’s a good thing I’m married, cuz there ain’t no way I’d be getting any action were I single.

-Mark

P.S. Shut up KROC.

Beer has tastings too
By Mark Tichenor and Bruce Lish

No one’s born a beer expert.

Becoming one takes dedication. It takes sacrifice. It takes a willingness to toil late into the night and, on occasion, wake up without one’s pants.

There is, however an easier way. By attending any or all of Rochester’s organized beer tasting sessions, beer newbies can learn about breweries and styles, and beer geeks can find rare brews and talk shop with the people who make and sell them.

Often, tastings serve as a direct contact point between beer drinkers and visiting brewers and brewery owners. Pretty neat, huh? When’s the last time Robert Mondavi showed up at your local wine event?

The Beer Social at the Tap and Mallet, 381 Gregory Street in Rochester, has set the standard for local tasting events. On the last Wednesday of every month, owner Joe McBane, and usually a guest speaker, set up shop in the bar half of the two-room restaurant.  “It’s a perfect fit with my business,” he says. “I wanted an ongoing project for educating people about beer. We’re passionate about this; we’re not just slinging the stuff on tap.”

While education definitely comes into play, generally in the form of an informative leaflet and brief spoken description of each beer as its being poured, McBane is keen to maintain the ‘social’ aspect of the Beer Social. People chat about the beer with their friends, and with people at neighboring tables. As more is sampled, the volume of conversation increases, as does the laughter. Beer is good stuff.

The response has been phenomenal. “We’ve sold out every beer social we’ve ever done,” McBane says, adding that the $12 tickets should be purchased in advance.

Lovin’ Cup, the new casual bistro cum beer and wine bar, has begun its own tasting series. Their monthly Brew-Ha-Ha (clever) features finger food, live music, and a hefty amount of beer for the $10 sampling price.

Sandwiched between Barnes & Noble and the RIT campus, Lovin’ Cup risks being pigeonholed as a student joint, but according to co-owner Erik Ward, the tasting helps. “People are actually driving here from all over,” he says. “Wednesdays were our worst days. The tasting turns Wednesday in to Friday.”

Ward finds the Brew-Ha-Ha provides another form of visibility. “People are blown away when they see what [craft beer] we have.” Indeed, by following the guidance of his girlfriend and co-owner Leslie Zinck, who cut her teeth learning Belgian beer pronunciations behind the Tap and Mallet’s bar, Ward and Lovin ‘ Cup have put together an impressive rotating indie beer lineup (it’s also one of the few places where you can get Genny Cream Ale on tap).

“There’s not a beer that comes in here that I don’t taste,” Ward says with almost breathtaking understatement.  He stays conscious about his past sampling offerings as well as those for future events. “It’s kind of like a concert and your picking the set list.”

The third organized beer tasting is Beer School, is held by Monty’s Korner on the second Thursday of every month. The brainchild of Monty’s Manager Jen Clark, Beer School is informal and conversational, with a dedicated crowd of regular attendees.

“I just wanted a lighthearted approach to introducing good people to good beer,” explains Clark. “The area has a younger market, and I wanted to introduce them to something other than the mainstream.”  The full room, as well as the repeat weekend patronage of Beer School attendees, is testament to the event’s success. And we’re not just writing this because we run the event.

Beer School costs $5 at the door. Count on sampling 4-6 high quality, and often-uncommon beers.

In other beers:
The 8th annual Winterfest goes down Saturday, February 14th, at the Scottsville Ice Arena. A $10 admission gets you beer and wine tasting, skating (because beer and slippery surfaces are a natural combination), live music, a pig roast, and the chance to crush someone’s dreams in the chili and chicken wing contests. For more information, check out  www.scottsvilleicearena.com

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.

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That’s right! Our Irish pub-rock band is back and just as chaotic as ever. Come join us on Friday, January 30 for a night of beer and cacophony!

-Mark

We popped down to the Tap & Mallet on the night of the Inauguration to grap a glass of the very hot-selling Ommegang Inauguration Ale, informally known as “Obamagang.” It’s a decent complex brown ale that starts off sweet, with a dry roasty finish.

I don’t know how to feel about this one.  It’s got more character than most brown ales, but it isn’t a standout. More than anything else, it’s a play on a trend; the beer equivalent of one of those tacks commemorative plates you see for sale in the back of that “USA Weekend” supplement that comes with your Sunday paper.

Ommegang does Belgian styles better than just about any other brewer in the country. It would have been cool had they done a really kick-ass Belgian that justified the high price of this limited release. Hower, it seems they were doing the brown ale style as some sort of hamhanded play on Obama’s ethnic heritage, displaying all the subtlety of a backhoe in a funeral parlor. They could at least have done a Belgian abbey brun. Sheesh.

That said, it’s not a bad beer, and will hold a great eal of appeal for anyone not yet wearied by the media’s Obama hype vortex. Me, I’ll take a Rooster Fish Nut Brown Ale, thanks.

-Mark

Looks like our friends in Honeoye Falls are picking up steam. Custom Brewcrafters Weizenbock is out now, and it’s one of the tastiest CB offerings I’ve had in a while. Weizenbock, a stronger, darker version of Bavarien Hefeweizen, is a pretty tough style to nail, but the Custom boys hit it close to dead-on.

It’s also encouraging to see the Weizenbock come out as a house-branded beer. Jason Fox and company have the chops to make excellent beers. And while their business requires them to make the private-label brews thir customers signed up for, it’s great to see them using their new facility to brew kick-ass Custom Brewcrafters craft beer as well.

Another plus: CB has just hired Jordan Sunseri, former brewer for Rooster Fish of Watkins Glen, NY. He’s a talented and creative brewer, and a hell of a weapon in Custom’s arsenal.

-Mark

Loks like a great setup for the return of Beer School. If all goes well, Chris Troegner, co-principal of Harrisburg’s Troegs Brewery, will be on hand as we guide drinkers through a selection of newly-available Troegs beers.

Troegs is one of the most respected indie breweries in the country. Come to Monty’s Korner in Rochester at 7pm for some deliciousness.

-Mark

By Mark Tichenor and Bruce Lish

San Diego’s Stone Brewing Company is legendary among craft beer lovers. The brainchild of brewers Greg Koch and Steve Wagner, Stone Burst on the scene with a beer named “Arrogant Bastard,” with the text on the bottle insinuating that the drinker was probably not good enough for the beer contained within, Stone piqued the interest of beerheads nationwide.

Turns out the Bastard is a very good brew, and so are the rest of Stone’s beers. Brewing beer for themselves, general public be damned, has been a successful formula for these guys and a slip in the face of traditional beer marketing. Stone is now available throughout the country, and their presence in the Northeast is growing.

“We don’t compromise, ever,” says Michael Saklad, Stone’s Regional Sales Manager for the Northeast. “We’re never going to change to meet mass market desire.”

Fortunately, Saklad has no problem connecting with inquisitive drinkers. A big, burly guy who’d look as much at home on the packaging of a certain brand of paper towel as on the Tap & Mallet barstool where we caught up with him, Saklad is nonetheless adept at gently educating the tastes of new customers.

“I ask people [at beer festivals] what kind of beer they like,” he explains, “and if they say light beer I tell them they’re selling themselves short. It’s like light dawning over Marblehead. I love the reaction when they taste our beer.”

Saklad points out, however, that Stone beer is not for everybody. The result of the brewery’s refusal to compromise for mass-market tastes is a line of beer ranging from the assertively hoppy Stone Pale Ale, to the outlandishly hoppy Ruination IPA. “It’s a progression of aggression,” he chuckles.

It’s a testament to both the quality of Stone beer and the maturing tastes of American beer drinkers that the brewery has been able to expand across the nation without paying for a single external advertisement. The evangelism of the beer community, and the occasional gushing article by people who fancy themselves beer journalists, have carried Stone to every corner of the nation except, bizarrely, Connecticut.

Undoubtedly, a key factor in that expansion has been a willingness to listen to customers that seems out of sync with Stone’s uncompromising attitude.

“We take a manila folder in a file cabinet and put a state name on it when we get the first customer email from that state.” Saklad says between swills. “We allow our customers to pull our beer through the market rather than making the beer and trying to push it through the market.”

For Saklad, a former home brewer who once pounded a desert sales beat for a distribution company in Arizona, it’s a natural approach for this special industry. “I think Stone can become more of a household name within the beer community. On our terms.”

Considering that Stone Brewery is now one of the most revered names in American indie Beer, Saklad is in a god position to have those terms met. And it turns out they coincide quite well with the desires of the American beer lover.

In other beers
It’s a good week for beer tasting. Lovin’ Cup, the new café in Henrietta’s Park Point, adjoining RIT, hosts it’s second monthly “Brew-ha-ha” this Wednesday at 8pm. They’re featuring the beer of Cleveland’s Great Lakes Brewing Company, another recent and excellent addition to the Rochester beer scene. It costs 10 bucks, but you’ll get $2 of if you’re an RIT student or faculty member.

We are also restarting our beer tasting series, Beer School, this Thursday at Monty’s Korner. Now a monthly event, We’ll be guiding people through the finest beers we can get our hands on starting at 7pm. $5 “tuition” gets you plenty of samples and food.

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.

It’s part of the inborn Rochester inferiority complex; we tend to view our own town as a bit of a backwater. When it comes to beer, that thinking simply does not apply.

We’re a hot commodity in the American beer scene. You can tell by who’s showing up in it. Over the past few months, brewers and brewery owners from Michigan, Pensylvania, even California have been flying, driving or crawling in to pimp their beer in our pubs.

People are starting to realize that the home of Genesee is something of a beer-lovin’ town.

-Mark

I just discovered a year’s worth of comments in my bulk folder. I’ve gone through and approved them all. Please don’t feel slighted if you’ve posted a comment and it never appeared. I had no idea it was there.

I’ll fix this for the future. Grrrr…

-Mark

It’s back. With some subtle alterations.

Thursday, January 15, at Monty’s Korner in idyllic Rochester, New York. Bruce, Patrick and myself will kick off another semester of Beer School. Our ’students’ will learn about the country’s (and the world’s) great beers through the time-honored scientific technique of sampling heavily.

There is a tuition this time around: $5 per beer school. We’re gonna use this money to acquire better beer, and hopefully better food, for future Beer Schools.

So come on down at 7pm, and bring your thirst, your curiosity, and your passion for beer.

-Mark