Beer Blogs

(Springfield, OR) - I guess coming soon doesn't really properly describe what's happening, as the beer is already available.  The real story is that bottles will be available soon.  Hop Vally Brewing Co. will be bottling Alphadelic IPA tomorrow.  Then they hope to have the beer in bottle shops around the brewery and a few places in Portland as well. 

About the beer, "An IPA brewed by hop lovers for hop lovers.  Enjoy this Northwest IPA; a hoppy bouquet leading into a light malty profile with hop character from beginning to end."  Alphadelic IPA comes in at 6.5% alcohol by volume and a big 90 IBUs.

Sly Fox Brewing is located near Philadelphia. The brewery makes its award winning northern German style pilsner with imported German malt and German and Czech hops.

Pikeland Pils is a 4.9 percent alcohol by volume beer from Pennsylvania that pours a bright golden color with a lacing white head. Spot on for the style, the malt is clear in the aroma and initial flavor, with hops taking over in mid-palate. The finish is dry and slightly grassy.

I am the jealous one, of course, after having read that Stone Brewing Company is doing a collaboration beer with the renowned brewers from Victory Brewing Company and Dogfish Head Brewing Company.

The fact that this brewery has the time to collaborate on so many other breweries is awesome, but one little thing at the end of the announcement caught my attention. “Remember, an essential part of collaboration is sharing, so feel free to bring a homebrew or two to share with everyone and we’ll waive the corkage fees!”

There are days when I wish I lived in Southern California and days that I’m glad I do not. This is one of the days I wish I lived in Southern California or that I could at least visit.

Stone’s collaboration efforts remind me of what craft beer is all about. Yes, they are making money hand over fist, but they also believe in the bigger picture, which is that craft beer is a conversation, it’s so far beyond just the beer. This is what the Big Three forgot or never figured out in the first place.

You can sell a lot of people a lot of beer, but if they don’t have a connection with the beer, it will be easily put aside for another brand.

Stone is a big brewery doing big things, but it’s the little things by which it will be remembered today and into the future.

Prost,

GG

(Milwaukee, WI) - This one is already out in retail, but seems to have slipped under the radar.  There isn't even info on the beer on the brewery's website. 

Dunkel Weiss is the "newest "Time Release" seasonal for the end of winter.  The Dunkel Weiss is a collaboration between Milwaukee Brewing Co. and Briess Malting.  We provided the recipe and package and they got to try out a new product....Chocolate Wheat Malt.  At 4.8% ABV the Dunkel has a nice classic heffe-weizen fruit and spice aroma with a subtle chocolate note.  It's a very smooth easy drinker.  Reminds me a big of a chocolate malt."

It is currently being distributed in 12oz bottles throughout southern Wisconsin.

(Pleasantville, NY) - There was all kinds of beer release news in today's newsletter from Captain Lawrence.  Here are all the details, straight from the newsletter.

Birra DeCicco

This is a new one that we created in conjunction with the DeCicco Family Markets. Our good friends as DeCicco’s imported some great Italian Chestnut Honey and Chestnut Jam to create the smokey and nutty undertones in this beer. The beer is fermented with our house Belgian yeast strain to impart fruity and spicy flavors associated with Abbey style ales. It is bottle conditioned for a lively carbonation.

This beer will be released this week at DeCicco’s market and will be available at the brewery this weekend. DeCicco’s will have the beer on tap as well as some of our other specialty beers on tap. We made a lot of it, so there is no chance this beer will sell out anytime soon so don’t worry.

[www.deciccos.com]

21 Center Street
Ardsley, NY 10502-1805
(914) 813-2009

Production: 350 cases
Size: 750 ml bottles crown cap finish
Price: $10 per bottle

Rosso e Marrone – Vintage 2010

Our gold medal winning American Sour Ale is ready to make its second release. Aged for over 26 months in French and American Oak barrels, re-fermented with red wine grapes and Brettanomyces, this ale is packed full of intense flavors. This years vintage expresses aromas of dark fruit, licorice, and oak and has a lively carbonation to top it all off.

Voted #1 Beer in America, 2009 – Wine Enthusiast Magazine
Gold Medal winner – GABF 2009 – American Style Sour Ale

Production: 900 bottles
Size: 375ml crown cap finished
Bottle Limit: 4 per person
Price: $15 per bottle, cash only

This beer is going to be released on March 27th at 10am sharp. We will use the usual ticketing system that we have used in the past. We are assuming from past releases that this beer will sell out the same day it is released. It will not be sent out into the distribution channels; we will not ship, hold, pre-sell or trade for any bottles, if you want some you must come to the brewery the day of the release.

Barrel Select Series

This is a new beer that we produced after waiting patiently for some of our sour brown ale barrels to “ripen” and take of the flavors of the wild yeast and the oak barrels until we thought they were ready to be blended and bottled. This batch is a blend of 6 barrels, 4 of one batch and 2 of another, the mix of which has created a totally new beer. Intensely sour with hints of oak and funk.

Release details – this beer will be released on March 13th at the Birdsal House in Peekskill. Come visit our good friends as they open this new, and sure to be popular, craft beer destination. This is the sister bar to the Blind Tiger in NYC, and we all know what they have been doing over the years.

[www.birdsallhouse.net]

They will have the first bottles and one keg for the event, so get there early if you want to try it out!

The brewery release date for this beer will be…..

April 17th – 12 pm
Production: 100 cases
Size: 750 ml crown cap finish
Bottle Limit: 4 per person
Price: $20 / 750ml bottle, cash only

Smoke from the Oak – Wine Barrel

This will be the 4th Smoke from the Oak – wine barrel release, and the last release in the series in its current formulation. The Smoke from the Oak series is not going away, but has been reformulated, and will debut later in the year, closer to the original vision we had for this series of beers.

This batch of SFTO – wine has a light Brettanomyces flavor and aroma, hints of wood, and touch of acidity from the wild yeast. The wine flavors are subtle, and the smoke has faded to give way to a new rich flavor.

May 8th – 12 pm
Production: 100 cases
Size: 750 ml bottle crown cap finished
Bottle Limit: 6 bottles
Price: $15 per bottle

(Chicago, IL) - Half Acre Beer Company has announced plans to start packaging their beer in cans.  There will be a canning line installed at the end of the month.  Once the brewery gets the canning line installed and operational, they will begin the transition from six-packs of 12ozbottles to four-packs of 16oz cans.  More and more craft breweries are deciding to go with cans, with Oskar Blues and 21st Amendmentsort of starting the whole thing within the craft segment.  Now though, tallboy cans seem to be taking off especially in craft beer, whereas Oskar Blues and 21st Amendment use 12oz cans.

Initially, they will be canning two beers, Daisy Cutter Pale Ale and Gossamer Golden Ale.  Look for cans to start rolling out of the brewery in April according to today's newsletter.  That's a pretty good turn around time for a line being installed at the end of the month. 

I had lunch at Lafayette Brewing Company on Friday. With it being Lent, I was planning on fish and chips. But the special of swordfish teriyaki kabobs were to good to pass. Damn tasty fish.

I drank a Marley's VSOP, which is aged on Jack Daniels barrels. Very tasty with chocolate malts. It is interesting how different styles react differently to barrel aging. Some beers come out tasting like bourbons. This one did not. There isn't a strong whiskey kick. Instead, it is pleasantly mellow. But I did get a bit of smoke in the nose from the charred barrels. They also have their Weeping Hog IPA on tap, which is pretty good from my experience.

Some other notes from LBC owner Greg Emig:
-In the next year, look for LBC to transition away from 12 ounce bottles to 22 ounce bottles. It is less costly to produce and allows them to bottle more of their other beers.
-You'll find LBC at Crown Brewing's new beer festival at the Lake County Fairgrounds on May 22nd.
-And Alpha Test will return to LBC on November 20th. Look for more varieties of hops.

Don’t forget to mark your calendars with all the cool craft beer events going on in March. Here in the Zoo you’ll find plenty of new spring seasonals to drink, two of which have already been released. Bayern’s Killarney and Big Sky’s Summer Honey are both on tap and in bottles already.

Bitter Root Brewing is hosting a Brewer’s Dinner on the 14th of March, but if you don’t already have tickets, well, you’ll just have to wait until the next beer dinner.

And I’ll be heading over to Seattle for the annual Hardliver Barleywine Festival March 20th at Brouwer’s Cafe.

And last, but certainly not least, St. Patrick’s Day should provide for ample craft beer tasting opportunities around the state, including the grand reopening of Flathead Lake Brewing Company in Bigfork.

Any other craft beer opportunities out there I need to know about?

Prost,

GG

I finally got around to ordering two hop rhizomes tonight.

Magnum Hop Rhizome

Mt. Hood Hop Rhizome

I bought a Magnum rhizomes because I have had difficulty buying the variety at my local brew shop and I wanted to grow a good bittering hop.

Mt. Hood was bred to be a Hallertauer replacement, so I thought it would be interesting to compare it to the noble hop. Plus, I wanted to grow a good aroma hop.

Once I get them, I’ll snap some photos and get more information about planting them.

A relatively newbie to the spontaneously fermented Belgian beers, I only recently discovered Armand Debelder. Joe Strange has several notes about the master lambic and geuze blender over at Thirsty Pilgrim. It was the post announcing the brewery's intent to stop brewing, start distilling, and go back to blending that caught my attention. I read the post with great interest, given my current expedition, and figured maybe somehow I'd be able to get my hands on a bottle of Drie Fonteinen if I was lucky. My family and I are traveling to the east coast at the end of this month and I thought I *might* be able to hunt down a bottle in NYC or Boston.

So it was a pretty big surprise when I stumbled upon it at Belmont Party Supply, the craft-beer mecca literally within walking distance of my house. Not only that, but they have both the Oude Kreik and the Oude Geuze. Picked up the Kreik, and on the next trip need to get several bottles of the Geuze--some for now and some to set aside.

A note about the beer, since with the exception of the beer geeks in my audience (although if you've stayed with me this far into this post, its probably time to admit you might be one), aged, blended, sour fruit beers aren't ones most folks have tried. Lambics and Gueuze beers are oddities of the beer world, in that they rely most heavily on the local micro flora to achieve their distinctive sour flavors. In addition, these beers are aged for years in oak barrels and are prized not only for their individual flavors, but for their ability to meld with other vintages. Like meritage wines, the young and aged lambics are blended together to draw out the best of both beers (a gueuze being merely that blend). In addition, to increase the types of flavors available, fruits--notably sour cherries or raspberries--are added. Odd as it sounds, the results are incredible. Intense and at the same time palate cleansing, the straight beers are the Limburger cheeses of the beer worlds and the fruit beers are the sorbets.

Brewery: Brouwerij Drie Fonteinen (via Google Translate, since source page is in Dutch)
Brewery Location: Belgium
Beer: Oude Kriek
BJCP Style: 17F. Fruit Lambic
Serving: Bottle

Appearance: From the time I uncorked the tiny 12 oz bottle, I knew I was in for a treat. Pours a rich cherry red with a rose-colored bubbly head. The picture doesn't do this beer justice--it is a beautiful beer.

Smell: Surprisingly, although present, the cherries don't overpower. Instead, they blend well with the sour barnyard character of the lambic to create a very balanced bouquet.

Taste: Sometimes sour fruit beers can be too over the top. In fact, I've had enough disappointing ones that I approached this one a little apprehensively. I could not have been more wrong. This beer is fantastically refreshing. Sour beers are intensely refreshing, in the way a tart pink lemonade can be in the middle of a sweltering July afternoon. The fruit adds depth to the sour, and mellows out the funkier flavors to make this incredibly thirst-quenching.

Mouthfeel: A very dry beer with a clean finish, which is a bit surprising given the boxes of cherries that I know went into this ale.

Drinkability: These beers won't be around for too much longer and it seems unlikely that you'll be able to get Debelder's blends stateside, so pick up a few bottles now and stick them under the stairwell for later. Although only 6 percent, they'll keep for up to ten years from the bottling date. Just don't get them at Belmont. I've got dibs on those bottles.

Technorati Tags: Drie Fonteinen, lambic, kriek, oude kriek, Armand Debelder, sour ales, beer, craft beer, brewing, homebrew

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) – The Indiana Senate has given final legislative approval to a bill allowing Indiana’s microbreweries to sell beer for carryout on Sundays.

The Senate voted 28-17 Monday to endorse House changes to the bill. The measure now heads to the desk of Gov. Mitch Daniels for his consideration.

The bill would limit the amount of beer a microbrewery can sell to about two cases per transaction. Indiana’s 32 microbreweries have limits on how much beer they can make each year.

The bill also repeals a law that prohibits alcohol sales during voting hours on election days.

That is the view from a gas station we stopped at on the way to Mexico City: you can see the two volcanoes in the wispy blue sky. I wish I'd taken more pictures on the trip, but we were traveling really fast, and most times it was pretty foggy/misty.







That's me addressing my people (I'm promising them more booze), overlooking the Plaza de La Constitución in the center of Mexico City (I'm standing on the top balcony of the Grand Hotel, a beautiful place, though I'm told the rooms aren't much).




And this is one of the nicest backbars I've ever seen, at La Opera, the "cantina" I talked about earlier. Amusing that La Estrella da Oro and La Opera are both called "cantinas." A bar is a bar is a bar...




I apologize for the layout. Blogger's kind of rudimentary on that, and it really depends on your screen.

You guys are probably pretty technically sophisticated, right? So I don’t need to tell you that there are other ways to get your Hedonist Beer Jive ranting-n-raving delivered to you besides clicking on a bookmarked link every day or two. Or Googling “Hedonist Beer” every time you remember that we exist, and that you haven’t come to visit in a while. Here are a few ways to “enhance” your HBJ experience:
1. Follow us on Twitter. Or more specifically, follow me. I try to post a "chirpy" (I think that’s what they’re called) every time I write something here. I’m @jayhinman.

2. Add Hedonist Beer Jive into Google Reader. Google Reader, if you don’t use it, is an amazing way to stay on top of the many stellar blogs out there. Just cut this link – http://hedonistbeerjive.blogspot.com – and paste it into the “Add a Subscription” field in Reader. Then every new post will be there for you to marvel at, aggregated with all the other stuff you’re interested in. Easier that that – click on the “Subsscribe to HBJ” link you see on the right comlumn here, and just add it that way. You can even make it a box on My Yahoo, if that’s something you use. (Me, I set up a My Yahoo page in 1997 or something, and I’m too lazy to make the switch away from it).
3. Got an iPhone? Get Byline. BYLINE simply takes your Google Reader feed and displays it beautifully on the iPhone. I think it’s the application I use more than any other in the iPhone. It’s a couple bucks, but come on – you’re worth it.
Just a few ideas, you don’t have to take ‘em or anything, but we’d like to crack 200 average daily readers in 2010 (we’re still holding strong at about 130 a day) and maybe these tech tweaks will help make it happen.

Monday’s ad is for Budman, who made his debut this day in 1969 as a cartoon spokesman for Budweiser. Today’s ad also ran circa 1969 and so it most likely is one of the first Budman ads and certainly the tagline “Dauntless Defender of Quality” is the one I’m most familiar with. I imagine A-B [...]

Senate sends booze reform to Daniels. Stay classy, Indianapolis Star. Here's the complete skinny from the man. Here's the final bill.

One good thing: Sunday growler sales. Up to nine growlers. Or two cases of bottles. Up to 576 ounces. Hey, that is 4.5 gallons. So much for 6th bbls and corney kegs. Sigh.

Must be at the brewery only (by the address of the permit – hope the restaurant part of your brewpub is at the same address). This seems to leave out the tap houses owned by Mishawaka, Mad Anthony, Barley Island, Turoni's, and Upland. And may complicate things at New Albanian – can beer made at the Public House be sold for Sunday carryout at Bank St.?

One good thing: Open on voting days.

One so-so thing: Open until 3am on Sunday nights.

One bad thing: Everyone must be carded for take-out. Even the clerk's mother.

Don't completely drink in the "unless they look over 50" talk. That's true, but you can still get cited and will have to prove your side. "In a criminal or administrative proceeding, it is a defense to a charge under this section that the individual to whom the permittee or employee or agent of the permittee sold, bartered, exchanged, provided, or furnished alcoholic beverages for consumption off the licensed premises was or reasonably appeared to be more than fifty (50) years of age." You conceivably could have to produce the customer or a picture of the customer at the hearing.

Oh, and that server training thing. Mandatory server training for all permit holders and re-training with each license renewal has been put off until May 1, 2011.

Anticipating the normal state-police run courses won't be able to handle the volume, those benevolent and omnipotent folks in downtown Indy have already allowed people to set up private server training schools. There are 67 already. Mainly because this silliness was supposed to go into effect 2 months ago. I wonder how many will be around when the madness starts next year. Or maybe our fearless leaders will just cancel the whole concept.

HBG reviews the new Scotty's Lakehouse out on Geist Resevoir.

Cincinnati is the home to the world's oldest Bock Festival. And it's this coming weekend. Parades, Tours, Parties, Sausage Queen, Lots of bocks at lots of bars. Even burning snowmen.

 

Arrow Brewing Company have announced their "IPA Project 2010." Teasers have been sent out but I have received the synopsis of this awesome sounding project which involves Arrow brewing "an authentic IPA by traditional methods and cask conditioning the resulting beer in a wooden barrel. On March 1, this IPA will be given its "sea journey" when the barrel ventures out into the notorious Foveaux

The president pays
Up on his Olympic bet.
A case of Molson

Written by Captain Hops.

References: Obama owes Harper a Case of Beer

Thing of the day: Team Canada 2010 Olympic Swift Replica Red Hockey Jersey

Related haiku:

• Beer for President 2008
• A friendly game…
• Advice for the Aftermath
• Overflow
• About the Bailout

The past two weekends have been my most productive as a homebrewer, at least from a volume standpoint.  My friend Nathan (whose basement houses the two "group" barrels that I have posted about repeatedly in the past) suggested that we get a third barrel, to store at my house.  I contacted Chrysalis Vineyards (the same winery that we bought our first barrel from during fall 2008).  They still had a surplus of French oak barrels that had held red wine, and the price was still the same so I didn't bother contacting anyone else.  The day before the first brew we drove to pick up the barrel, when we got back we had to manhandle it through the snow and down into my basement and onto the simple barrel rack that Nathan had put together.  Originally we had planned to pick up the barrel two weeks earlier, but DC's "Snowmageddon" prevented us from heading out there two Fridays in a row.

This time though instead of having 7-8 people involved (each brewing five or ten gallons on their own to blend and then age in the barrel), we decided to handle the brewing ourselves with two marathon 27.5 gallon brew days.  This audacious plan was only possible because Nathan has been piecing together a large scale brewing system from a 165 qrt  (40+ gallon) cooler mash-tun, and two 15 gallon keggles (this was his first time using all of it together).  Still we needed my burner, and pots (not to mention garage) to produce that much wort in one day.  The two brewdays were surprisingly uneventful, taking about 11 hours each from the time I started to heat the strike water until we finished cleanup.

We didn't have anywhere besides the barrel to ferment 60 gallons of wort so we decided to go with a Lambic-esque recipe (since that is the only style that is left to age/sour in primary).  We used mostly pils/pale with some unmalted wheat and oats (although more oats and less wheat than would be in a Lambic), as well as some malted wheat we had lying around.  Not perfectly traditional, but the raw grains will provide some starches for the long souring process, and the simple/clean malt bill should be a good base for some experiments with fruit/herbs/spices (it is too  much beer to drink all of it "plain").  I'll also say that it's a good thing I had a drill to turn my Barley Crusher, not sure if I have the arm stamina to crank through 65 lbs of grain (look at that grain fly!).

For yeast/bugs we used half of the 10 gallon batch of Bugfarm Sour that I brewed a month ago along with the slurry from the other half. It was fermented with a slurry from Al B which contained about 15 strains of Sacch, Brett, Lacto, and Pedio that he had isolated from a number of great commercial breweries.  The yeast and microbes took the first 27.5 gallons of the wort down to 1.015 by the time the second batch was brewed, so there should be plenty of cells to handle the second half of the wort.  We also tossed in the dregs from a couple bottles of Jolly Pumpkin that we drank during the brewdays just to up the biodiversity even more.
What are the two of us going to do with our 60 gallons of sour beer?  Solera.  The solera concept is most commonly used in vinegar and sherry production (although Cambridge Brewing beat us to solera beer with a sour cherry beer called Cerise Cassée).  The general idea is that on a set timetable some of the liquid in a barrel in transferred out and fresh liquid is added to fill the barrel back up.  In some cases a series of barrels in employed with each barrel being successively smaller and containing an older blend.  Whether one barrel or many, the idea is to create a blend that has already aged together (from a practicality standpoint it also means that we never have to deal with an empty barrel).  We decided a solera would be a good way to tackle a two person barrel since neither of us really has a need for 30 gallons of sour beer at a time (on top of the other two barrels and our own batches).  For more talk about soleras check out the post about the interview Nathan and I did with Basic Brewing Radio a couple months back (or Wikipedia, where I learned the same system is called by the cooler sounding "Perpetuum" in Sicily).
It will probably be a year before we pull the first round of beer from the barrel.  The current plan is to take 15 gallons once a year (replacing it with 20 gallons or so to account for evaporation), this will yield a beer with an average blended age of 3 years after a few pulls.  We will make adjustments to the recipe if the beer is initially too sour, or not sour enough.

Perpetuum Sour

Recipe Specifics
--------------------
Batch Size (Gal): 55.00
Total Grain (Lbs): 129.25
Anticipated OG: 1.058
Anticipated SRM: 4.0
Anticipated IBU: 10.5
Brewhouse Efficiency: 69 %
Wort Boil Time: 75 min

Grain
-------
42.6% - 55.00 lbs. German Pilsener                            
37.1% - 48.00 lbs. American Pale Malt    
7.9% - 10.25 lbs. Oatmeal             
7.0% - 9.00 lbs. Unmalted Wheat         
5.4% - 7.00 lbs. Wheat Malt
        
Hops
------
4.25 oz. Willamette (Pellet 3.70% AA) @ 60 min.
3.00 oz. Cascade (Whole 5.75% AA) @ 60 min.

Extras
--------
2.00 Whirlfloc @ 15 min.
5.00 tsp Irish Moss @ 15 min


Yeast
-------
Al B's Bugfarm #3
Water Profile
-----------------
Profile: Washington DC (Carbon Filtered)

Mash Schedule
------------------
Sacch Rest - 90 min @ 156
Mash Out - 15 min @ 168

Notes
-------
Brewed the first half 2/20/10

Mashed a whole sack of pils, plus 4.5 lbs each unmalted wheat and (flaked) oats.

Collected 12 gallons of first runnings @1.083.  Added 2 1/8 oz of Willamettes after 15 min boil. (996 Gravity Points)

Collected 8.5 gallons of second runnings @ 1.049.  Originally in a keggle, but poured into my 10 gallon pot since the keggle started leaking.  Added 2 1/8 oz of Willamettes after 15 min boil. (416 GP)

Collected 5 gallons of second runnings @1.034.  No hops, 60 min boil. (170 GP)

Added 6.5 gallons of sparge water.  Stirred, rested for ~15 min.  Collected the same volume back ~1.019.  (123 GP)

1705 Total GP collected.  Which works out to 1.057 in 30 gallons, assuming no losses to hops/trub.

Racked all of the wort to the Chrysalis red wine barrel (French oak from World Cooperage) trying to filter/settle our most of the hops/trub.

Racked in 4.5 gallons of Bug Farm Sour and the ~1/2 gallon of dregs from the other half.  Also added the dregs from a Jolly Pumpkin Bière De Mars.

Hit it with 2 min of pure oxygen.  Left in the basement at around 55.

The combined mixture in the barrel was 1.054, which means the rest would have to average around 1.060, since that is more that I calculated we are probably a bit under volume.

2/27/10 The first portion was down to 1.015 before we added the second half of the wort.
------------------------------
Second half brewed 2/27/10

Used the rest of the malt (Pale, malted wheat, oats, raw wheat).

Switched hops to whole cascades to make removing them from the wort post-boil easier.

Divided the hops roughly between the three pots.  We were out of whirlfoc so we added some rehydrated Irish moss with 15 min left in each boil (5 tsp total).

Hit similar gravities to the first round, but both keggles worked so we got 11 gallons 1.086, 11 gallons 1.055, and 6 gallons 1.024.

Ended up a couple gallons short of a fill, so filtered/boiled/cooled 4 gallons of water and racked it into the barrel to fill it to the top.  Then I racked 5 gallons of the fully blended wort out to ensure there was adequate headspace for the krausen.  Added the dregs from a Jolly Pumpkin Oro De Calabaza (which had just won a NYT Golden Ale Tasting). By the next morning the airlock was going crazy, bubbling probably 5 times a second.

That’s right, today is Beer Day! In Iceland, they celebrated the end of 74 years of prohibition in 1989 with what has come to be known as Beer Day. I am sure you’re wondering, “Why do I care?” Well, it’s a good reason to drink a beer, and secondly, because the powers that be at Examiner.com asked that we all write about it.

Just because someone has asked us to all write about a similar topic doesn’t mean it makes for bad reading (see: The Session). With Examiners all around the country, and many of them well versed beer writers, I suggest seeing what they have going on over there and raise a pint to the Icelanders on this celebratory day.

Santa Rosa Craft Beer Examiner – Celebrate Beer Day with Lagunitas Brewing: Olde Gnarly Wine

Examiner Coverage: Beer Day

If you weren’t able to attend the kick-off for O’Fallon Brewery’s newest year-round release, Hemp Hop Rye, here’s a list of places you may be able to find it around town.  Please note that these are all places that have ordered kegs of Hemp Hop Rye, they may not have them on tap yet.  Call to verify they’re currently being served:

• The Shanti
• Riddle’s Penultimate Caf & Wine Bar
• Dressel’s Pub (CWE)
• Cicero’s
• Hammerstone’s 9th & Russell (Soulard)
• Llywelyn’s Soulard
• Iron Barley (Cask!!!–Only 2 Firkins of it–dry-hopped with Amarillo!!!)

Tags: cicero's, dressel's pub, hammerstone's, hemp hop rye, iron barley, llywelyn's pub, riddle's, the shanti