My band, The Sisters of Murphy, has a gig at Lovin’ Cup on the normal Beer School date. So we’re moving Beer School back a week to February 18.

This month, we’ll be exploring *gasp* lagers, the antithesis of everything for which the modern enlightened beer snob stands. We’ll try several from around the world, and demonstrate that Lager is in fact an old, complex style with an interesting backstory. You’ll see that all lager is not yellow in color, and can vary tremendously in flavor. Finaly, we’ll demonstrate why the very thought of making certain lager styles leaves some brewers quaking in their funny little rubber boots.

Oh, and if this move left a hole in your schedule for the 11th, you could do a lot worse than coming down to Lovin’ Cup and joining us with a beer and a song.

-Mark

Good news. Rochester area beer lovers can get their suds on tonight at Lovin’ Cup’s Brew-ha-ha tasting, in Park Point adjacent to the RIT campus. $10 gets you te full tasting, and the featured brewery tonight is Ithaca Brewing.

Lovin’ Cup’s tastings are totally worth it. The proprietors really care about good beer, and go out of their way to ensure a great tap selection.Their Brew-ha-ha series is monthly, and draws a large, diverse crowd.

Beer School is tomorrow at Monty’s Korner. Join Tom and myself as we welcome a classic American craft brewery upon its return to the Rochester market: Goose Island, from Chicago. Tasting is $5 and starts at 7:30. Or so.

-Mark

Well boys and girls, it’s another month, another trip though the open-ended keg that is the Rochester beer scene.

Let’s begin our odyssey at Lovin’ Cup, at RIT/Park Point. Their Brew-Ha-Ha tasting takes place Wednessday, June 10. They’re doing Saranac Beer, which has been doing some interesting things lately, suh as a Rye Pilsner that’s nice on a hot day.

The following Thursday we have Beer School at Monty’s Korner. Join Loud Tom and myself in welcoming Brewery Ommegang’s Tori Perez as she takes us through a flight of Belgian beers by Ommegang and various Belgian Brewers. It’s a bit more expensive than most Beer School events at $7, but this is expensive, amazing beer, and it’s totally freakin’ worth it.

Our friends at the Tap and Mallet can’t shake their pig roast fetish. The next installment of “Hog Heaven” will take place at the Tap on June 14. Expect tons of beer and delicious, falling-off-the-bone pork.  Tickets can be purchased at the bar.

Sorry I’ve been updating the blog so infrequently lately. Sometimes I just need to step away from beer writing, enjoy drinking beer without overanalyzing the stuff. Worry not, something that pisses me of is bound to happen soon. -Mark

The guys from Sly Fox must really freakin’ love it here. Corey and Brian guest-host the Lovin’ Cup Beer Social on Wednesday, April 8, and then Beer School at Monty’s Korner on Thursday, April 9.

It’s cool that these guys, who already exist in the huge (albeit very competitive) Philadelphia market, see so much potential in far-off, tiny Rochester. I think all area beer lovers can take heart that, even while their opinions and wants are scoffed at as small potatoes by local brewers, they are still noticed and appreciated as discerning, valuable customers.

-Mark

Sorry this is so late.

Lovin’ Cup, at Park Point by RIT, is holding the latest in their cleverly-named ‘Brew-ha-ha” beer samplings. The topic: You guessed it. Irish beer.

In the spirit of cooperation over competition, the special guest presenter will be a guy who lived relatively close to Ireland: Tap and Mallet owner Joe McBane.

You’ll get informative facts about the finest Irish beers, plenty of samples of said beers, and fine tradtional Irish foods such as “pigs in a blanket” and “meatballs.” The festivities begin at  8pm. Begorrah!

-Mark

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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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.

Lovin’ Cup is an asset to Rochester. A combination cafe slash bistro slash beer-wine bar, the Cup carries the easy conviviality and hipness of an urban joint, while actually located smack-bang in the depressing commercial brownfield of suburban Henrietta.

Most places like this treat beer kind of as an afterthought. They know it’s good business to have some craft or import bottles on hand, but happily stock whatever their distributors tell them. Lovin’ Cup’s owners differentiate their place by giving a shit about the beer they serve.

No surprise there. Proprietrix Leslie Zinck used to tend bar at the Tap & Mallet, under the wing of local beer pro Joe McBane. And her husband, Eric, was a fixture on his barstool. No way would this pair open a place without careful attention to the tapline.

So there’s 10 taps that rotate regularly. Well, 9 actually. The 10th is reserved for Lovin’ Cup Koelsch, made especially for the Cup by Rohrbach (specifically by Bruce Lish, my bandmate, occasional roomie, and grubby road-trip partner). An underrepresented style among indie brewers, The sweet, prickly Kölsch alone is worth the drive out to the Cup’s RIT campus location. Add 5 additional Rohrbach samples and you’ve got yourself a sweet evening.

-Mark

Eric from Lovin’ Cup, pouring his house Kölsch

The program for the evening

Larry, Rohrbach’s sales guy, doing what he does best

Bruce, Rohrbach’s brewer, caught in the moment

 My compadre Bruce Lish, Brewer for the Rohrbach Brewing Company, will be on hand at Lovin’ Cup tommorow night for a guided tasting of his current specialty beers.

Bruce’s beer is starting to take Western New York by storm, or at least by drizzle. Local restauranteurs are lining up to have a Rohrbach/Bruce Lish house beer. Among them is Lovin’ Cup, the new cafe/bistro/music bar in RIT’s Park point, for whom Bruce makes a Kölsch.

Lovin’ Cup also has a cool take on cafe food, with fresh ingredents and irreverent combinations. They should pair up nicely with the Rohrbach beer. Just don’t let yourself get stuck on the cutesy menu names.

If you appreiate good beer, spend your Wednesday night among folks of like mind.  If you’re nice to Bruce, he may even let you taste something special.

-mark

Bruce Lish texted me today that I’d better get my ass over to the Rohrbach Brewing Company and photograph his self-planted hops before he picks them. I’m glad I did. The cones are huge, fragrant, oozing with lupulin and practically falling off the vines. They’e going into the seasonal Harvest Ale, and this time Bruce is going to give Rochester hopheads what they’ve been clamoring for: a big ass, in-your-face double IPA. The homegrown New York State hops are the icing on a very bitter cake.

This is a departure for Bruce since he returned to the Rohrbach kettles; he’d been expressing his love of rare German styles as of late. The Koelsch brewed for new cafe Lovin’ Cup can’t be delivered fast enough to keep up with demand, and now there’s an Altbier on deck, brewed with longtime German deli Swan Market in mind.

He let me try the Alt, although it’s still in secondary fermentation and not yet filtered. It’s pretty much bang on to style, perhaps a little more bitter due to its lack of maturation time. There’s a slight sweetness and a nutty body that holds up even as the beer quenches. This is going to be a popular one.

Still, the seasons change, and people have certein expectations. At the time of my visit, Lish was hard at work calculating out the figures for a pumpkin ale. I’m good for… about one of those per season. But knowing Bruce, the pumpkin won’t overwhelm, as if some jerk shoved a slice of pie in your glass.

Personally, I can’t wait to taste that DIPA.

-Mark