A quick shout-out to the folks at the Hoxton Square Bar, in Hoxton Square, London. This place chucks the traditional tied-house system out the window.

You see, by tradition, the typical British pub is “tied” to one particular brewery. In exchange for assistance with rent, material goods, and other favors from the brewery, the pub agrees to sell that producer’s beer exclusively. It’s one of the things that frustrates English beer lovers who search for variety.

But that system is going the way of the red telephone box. The Hoxton Square Bar has a worldly beer list, from Belgians like DeKonick to Brooklyn Lager and other American craft brews. They also have a full restaurant and an attached music venue, so you can get your entire evening’s worth of entertainment in one place, which, if you’re visiting London, is probably exactly what you’d want to do.

-Mark

Edit: The Tap and Mallet’s beer social is April 30, no this week as originally reported. Oops.

Rochester has some pretty cool beer events coming up. The Tap and Mallet will be hosting the fourth of its “Beer Social” tasting sessions Wednesday April 30. The theme is dark beers, and the guest presenter is some guy from the Southern Tier Brewing Company.

I run a regular tasting session too, but it’s nothing like what Joe does at the Tap. His beer selections are impeccable, his guest speakers knowledgeable, and dude puts out a mean antipasto tray. It costs $12, but you don’t go away thirsty. Or hungry.

Meanwhile, this coming Thursday, The Old Toad is kicking off Fish Fest, an ongoing celebration of the breweries Dogfish Head and Roosterfish. They’ll have rare casked ales and unique one-offs not usually available in Upstate New York. It’s going to be the first time Dogfish Head’s Chateau Jiahu is on draft in Rochester. I think the festival is going to go on until they run out of the beer, but for the best stuff, get to the Toad soon.

Fellow beercrafter Pat Hughes and I made a pilsner in his comically well-equipped basement brewery last friday. We did all-grain with a decoction mash. It’s a bit dark, but everything looks like it went well.

Of course, Pat gets most of the credit. He’s an experienced all-grain homebrewer and one of those guys who’s depressingly good at math. So he formulated the recipe did the timing, operated hos valves and levers, and handled the troubleshooting. I ground up grain and stirred. And lifted heavy stuff.

I gotta tell you, homebrewing is a terrific hobby for anyone who loves watching large quantities of liquid heat up.

-Mark

A new bar, The Magpie, is now open on Park Avenue in Rochester, in the former location of the First Taste grill. We checked it out last night and mostly liked what we saw. The theme is pseudo-classy, with lots of warm, dark wood tones. The narrow main room is dominated by a bar with full liquor shelf and 15 taplines. Owner John Dimetopo…Dimetoupo….John told me he was encouraged by the early flood of custom. Apparently the place is getting a white-collar professional crowd early and a somewhat younger set later in the evening. On the night of our improptu visit, the ratio of females to males was encouraging, if you’re a dude.

There’s nothing overly exciting on the draft line yet, and John made it clear he’s not trying to be a Tap & Mallet clone. The best beer on is Brooklyn Brown Ale. The very cool wood and glass-fronted cooler had some decent bottles: Leffe Brown and stuff like that.

The place is still feeling its oats, and we’ll see who gravitates to The Magpie. My feeling is that it’s going to be a comfortable, social watering hole until about 9pm, at which point the meat-market Hollister-wearing white-capped Dave matthews Band-listening Retar…er, young men and women… will take over.But for now, it’s a pleasant place to grab a decent brew and watch the Yankee game.

-Mark

(I also posted this on the beeradvocate.com forums)

It looks like Rochester’s former best beer bar is making an effort again.

Sure, they’ve always had a hundred plus beers on tap, but, over the years, the chain stumbled in the areas of beer maintenance, staff product knowledge, and, well, general caring about beer as anything more than another revenue stream, like waffle fries or a BBQ-chicken sandwich. Many burned bridges resulted in an extensive but increasingly monotonous tapline, and the closure of the Gregory Street location (now the Tap & Mallet) alienated the urban, adventurous craft beer customers. The suburban locations currently open seemed to attract more college students and families, groups that either don’t care about craft beer or don’t drink at all.

It looks like things are changing though. As I learned from Kira, There’s a new website, www.macgregorsgrillandtaproom.net, and they’re promoting a membership-based beer club. Also, the Henrietta location (not sure about the others) has started a Firkin Friday, with a rotating guest cask ale. We attended the last one, and enjoyed several pints of well-casked Blue Point Hoptical Illusion.

It’s good to see this attention to beer from the place that taught me a lot of what I know. Even though I love the Tap & Mallet, I still miss aspects of the old Gregory Street MacGregor’s, and we can still be seen whiling away a Sunday afternoon over several pints of Spaten at the Empire Blvd. location. Keep up the good work, MacG’s!

-Mark

The subject: pub cans.

For years, the makers of Guinness tried to figure out a way to sell their creamy, nitrogen-dispensed Irish stout for home consumption. Eventually, some genius invented the pub can: a can with a nitrogen-dispensing thingy in it that activates when you pop the top. So theoretically you can pour yourself an authenitc nitrogen-dispensed pint in the comfort of your own den.

It’s not just Guinness anymore. Many different beers of various styles which usually get served via silky smooth nitrogen are now available in these pub cans, and we’re gonna  taste some of them.

So come down to Monty’s Korner in Rochester tonight at 7:30 (starting promptly this time; I have band practice at 9) and taste what England has to offer…from a can!

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

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.

The Old Toad, Rochester, NY.

“So we took a couple of firkins,” Jules Suplicki, bar manager of The Old Toad explained in her cute English accent “And we mailed ‘em up to Allagash. We had no idea what they’d put in them. They shipped them back filled with Curieux.”

“Cask-conditioned Allagash Curieux?” I asked, demonstrating my devastating logical abilities.

“Yeah. This is the first time that it will be availoable in Rochester on Cask.”

Jules was excited enough about this to print up a bunch of signs and make the tapping of the Allagash uber-beer a full fledged event. This Friday, January 11th, the two casks will be broached, and this Beer Advocate ‘A’ rated beer can be freely enjoyed by everyone who isn’t afraid to fill out a credit application.

I’m just saying… it won’t be cheap. but by the end of the night it’ll probably be gone.

-Mark

In the interest of bringing Beercraft readers the finest quality beer-oriented photography, I headed over to the Tap & Mallet to practice large-aperture shooting with my new Canon Digital Rebel XTI.

I forget which saison this is

Rohrbach McBane’s Best Bitter meets Gaffel Koelsch

I should’ve used a smaller aperture for this shot

-Mark