I mentioned before in part 1 that statistically when wine is blind tasted, interesting things happen. For a full explanation, read here, but I want to highlight two specific examples:

– The same wine, judged by the same judges, received varied scores when judged blind multiple times
– The same wine was presented to the same set of judges twice, but with two different labels. One label was for a standard table wine, and the other for a pricer grand cru. When judged as a table wine, descriptors were “weak, light and flat” compared to “complex, balanced, long and woody” when judged as a grand cru.

To an extent, I believe that the same can be true of beer as well, but it also depends on the situation.  (more…)

A three part article regarding the drinking of beer for pleasure and how our opinions of beer are often influenced by external forces.

Jeff Alworth of Beervana recently discussed on his site the extrinsic factors that influence the price of a bottle of beer. He uses the example the graffiti artist Banksy selling original artwork without his name attached and only getting 1/500th of their actual value.

It’s not true for every beer in the grocery store, but when you start looking at bombers and special releases, you see that breweries are getting a lot more than the intrinsic value of the beverage–which is often no more than the value of the regular sixer of craft beer.  Like a Banksy canvas, that label means a whole lot to the consumer.

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Confirmed by a recent Reddit AMA:

We will have some kind of sour out year round starting in 2014

I’m a huge fan of New Belgium’s sours, and I’m excited to see what, and how, they release a year round sour beer. More than likely, I think this may be referring to La Folie. Lauren Salazar has said before that she hopes to be able to release La Folie year round.

My other guess, is that it won’t be a 100% sour beer, and will instead be a blended beer; ie La Folie is 100% dark sour beer (Oscar) and Le Terrior is 100% light sour beer (Felix). A beer like Tart Lychee, on the other hand, is actually a blend of Felix with non-sour beer. This allows them to use less sour beer (an important consideration since it takes a year or two to sour a batch of beer), but it also makes the beer less sour. If it’s going to be available year-round, this will allow it to be more approachable for more people who don’t have the palate for a full blown sour beer.

COCHON 555 was founded as a means to help raise the awareness of heritage breed pigs. These are pigs that are raised and grown naturally, providing a richer, more robust flavor when compared to their blue collar counterparts: factory raised industrial pigs. Naturally, the only way to preserve these upper class heritage pigs is to eat as many of them as possible!

COCHON events feature several whole heritage pigs, along with several chefs to prepare various dishes using every piece of the pig. Jokes aside, the idea is that through these nationwide events, consumer awareness will be raised, not just of heritage pigs, but also of sustainable food systems.

One of the event’s sponsors, Crispin Cider, was generous enough to provide us access to the Las Vegas COCHON event, located at Commonwealth downtown. To ensure that these pigs are getting the awareness that they deserve, Danny and I made sure to overindulge, and binge eat as many pork products as possible. That was the point of all this, right? (more…)

About a year ago my life was changed. I had The Bruery’s Black Tuesday for the first time, drinking in a line at Great American Beer Festival, amongst strangers I had befriended, they told me I was in for a 19.2% ABV treat. I fell for Tuesday, but that’s a longer drunken story. Luckily, The Bruery had a membership plan just for me and any other person who was in love with Tuesday. (Because I don’t care if Monday’s blue) Additionally, this membership goes on sale for the next year on TUESDAY, so if you want to know a rundown of the Society, read up!

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You all remember CraftHaus right? Back in May, I had the wonderful pleasure of meeting with (and drinking with!) Dave and Wyndee Forrest, founders of CraftHaus Brewery. At that time, they were just launching their Kickstarter campaign to help with the final funding of their brewery. They’ve since surpassed their goal, and have been sitting quiet while they prepare for their grand opening.

Not satisfied by simply waiting for the brewery to open, I’ve reached out to Wyndee to catch up on where they are in the process, and to get their thoughts on what it’s like to start a business.

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Cisco Brewers is a Massachusetts based brewery that is one part of a 3 part brewery/winery/distillery located on Nantucket Island. Soon, they will begin distributing their beers to Las Vegas. I was given four of their year round beers for review, and after tasting these beers, I’m excited for what may soon be available in Las Vegas. They also have a line of sour beers, and their current fall seasonal is a smoked pumpkin beer; all of which I’m very interested in trying! Without further ado, below are my tasting notes for the beers that I tried:

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Though I don’t often, if ever actually, talk about saisons on here, I am a bit of a fan of them. I’m not even going to bother writing about the history of saisons, because Jeff Alworth of Beervana does an incredible job doing so here.

I will however include this snippet from Garrett Oliver’s Oxford Companion to Beer that describes the flavor profile of a saison:

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Raise your hand if you were at the beer and chocolate pairing event with Happy Ending Chocolates at Tenaya Creek Brewery. If you didn’t raise your hand just now, go ahead and slap yourself for missing out on an incredibly fun evening enjoying delicious beers and chocolates specially prepared for the event.

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