I like beers from Otter Creek and Jack's Abby, but their collaboration beer, Joint Custody, is a can full of nope. Thankfully it's also exceedingly rare, so chances are you'll be spared from drinking one. I don't usually talk about bad beer experiences in this column - and feel free to skip down to the two contrasting examples I give below - but this one's been nagging at me.
The collective German heritage of the OC and JA brewmasters inspired them to seek out two newborn German hop strains, Huell Melon and Mandarina Bavaria, in the creation of what they call a Nouveau Pilsner. Joint Custody pours cloudy gold, and has a slightly odd lemony scent - both fine - and then you take a drink and taste fresh Band-Aid. There is the unmistakable pils malt underneath, but what in the hell with this plasticky flavor? In beer-nerd terms, we sometimes call this ortho-chlorophenolic, because it's a medicinal smell/flavor which usually comes from residual sanitizers, or using chlorinated water to make the beer. I don't think that's what happened here, we're dealing with seriously talented brewers, so the only remaining explanation is they've done this on purpose.
Holy Mother of God, do I love IPAs." Thus did I begin acolumn from my early days as a beer writer here at the Bites of CT, and the bloom has yet to fall off that particular rose. Two of the beers in that review from 2011 aren't around anymore, one remains a permanent favorite, and today is a particularly good day for anyone who shares my adoration of the sainted hop.Happy National IPA Day, everyone.
Here's a quick rundown of a few spots who have reached out and let us know what's on tap. Anoint thy lips.
No. Just no, NYC commissioner of the Department of Health, Mary Bassett - I will not avoid drinking beer on scorching hot summer days. Yes, I will drink some water, because I am not an idiot, but you can take a cold beer from my (still mostly warm), dead hand. Thankfully, this is 'murica, where many a dilapidated package store is hung with signs advertising the coldest beer in town (following Strong Bad's motto: "A One That Isn't Cold Is Scarcely A One At All"), thus saving us all from aloe vera vitamin drinks and the resultant loss of will to live.
A crisp beer on a hot day is a joy forever, as the poet probably said, so this week we're going to check out three hot weather beers, canned for your lawn mower riding, golf bag stuffing, back yard sitting pleasure.
If there is one sound that can make you think of a hot summer day, it is the clink of ice in a big, tall glass. Ka-chink, clink, clink. Does a fizzy sound follow on the heels of those ka-chinks? Is there a ker-plop of a citrus wedge tumbling into that cool pool of refreshing, fizzy goodness? Ahhhh...and this is the sound that follows all of those...Ahhhh. Hello, icy cold craft beer, hello tart and tingly gin and tonic, hello creamy pina. It’s so nice to see you again.
To make you overflow with summer lovin’, we have found spirit shops around the state that will put the ka-chink-clink-clink in your future...
The first ever Beers At The Beach micro-fest went down at Calf Pasture Beach in Norwalk earlier this month, and CTBites was there to give you a look. The party's host, Ken Tuccio of the Welcome To Connecticut podcast, created the event to showcase in-state breweries which don't have large distributions, and give people a chance to try the beers and meet the people who make them. The guest of honor on June 11th was Beer'd Brewing of Stonington.
Burgers and hot dogs were provided by Ripka's Beach Cafe as part of the party, and shrimp, clams and oysters were also on ice for bites al fresco. Beer'd took the opportunity to launch their new imperial amber,Get To The Choppa!
"Raygun Gothic," they call it - all pneumatic curves and sleek fins blasting through air and space. This was the look of a future that meant rocket vacations to the moon, a fission reactor in every home, and wristwatch television walkie-talkies. Like Cicely, Alaska, I've always wanted to live there.
Humanity has accomplished some of this - I'm sure at least one of you reading this right now has an iWatch on your wrist - but the dream, the one Huge Gernsback had while writing inside his isolator and thinking about "Vacation City" suspended 20,000 feet in the clouds, is out of reach. Maybe not quite so far as I think, though, thanks to Beavertown Brewing of London, and late of America.
When we last left Friday Froth, your occasionally humble and rapidly expanding host wastalking American Craft Beer Week, and local offerings from OEC, Stony Creek and Stubborn Beauty. We'll continue the furthering rides the Connecticut beer bus this week as we take our minds on a drive to Bristol, Hartford, and Stratford. Buckle up, because it gets heavy.
Life is currently pretty fluid out there on the vast, rolling prairie of American craft beer. Everyone who lays hands on a mash paddle seems to be inventing a new style, or at least melting an existing style down and sculpting it into a new form. Much of this morphology arrives in the world with enough alcohol to sterilize minor gunshot wounds. These come stamped with labels marked "double" or "Imperial," which are largely interchangeable, and just mean "strong."
American Craft Beer Week was last week, and my pants hate me. You'd think massive doses of beer paired with little to no sleep for long periods of time would do a body good, but no. Anyone would tell you that if you'd just listen, but then you'd also have to hear about "healthy decisions" and "getting out of that bulldozer this instant," and anyway I can always buy new pants.
So, I'm fat now and here are some of the beers which left me with a) no regrets in that regard, and b) this red line under my navel.
Stony Creek Dock Time. For the past several years, the tasting room at Two Roads has reigned supreme in Connecticut. It is a massive, brightly lit space which fairly bubbles with history, it has an enormous central bar, and the stools have these bearings in them that let you spin around. Truly a top notch operation. Now, though, dare mention the Two Roads tasting room in any context and people will burst from out of nowhere shouting a chorus of "BUT HAVE YOU BEEN TO STONY CREEK" like it's the "fiiiiive gooold-en riiiiings" part in The Twelve Days of Christmas.
Stratford, CT's Two Roads Brewing Company will be celebrating their 2nd annual Road Jam concert on the grounds of their 100 year-old brewery building and it promises to be just as fun as last year with four awesome bands, great food trucks and plenty of Two Roads beer.
Building on the success of last year's event, this year's Road Jam will be a must-attend festival for music lovers. Two Roads has hired three local bands as well as a headliner all the way from New Orleans to keep you dancing until last call.
Returning this year will be the Alpaca Gnomes who killed it at last year’s event and new to the line-up this year are two other Connecticut favorites, the psychedelic Snooty Garland and jam group The McLovins.
Headlining the event is New Orleans' finest brass band: The Soul Rebels. They have shared the stage with everyone from Kanye West to Dave Matthews and have collaborated with some of this generation's best musical acts. They have been described by the Village Voice as “the missing link between Public Enemy and Louis Armstrong.” Two Roads is thrilled to feature them as the main act.
Ninety9Bottles Craft Beer Festival is back for it's 2nd Annual Festival where Festival goers will enjoy a variety of brews while overlooking beautiful Norwalk Harbor up atop the hill at Oyster Shell Park. With an emphasis on New England based breweries, we will be pouring samples of 40+ CRAFT BEERS and some old favorites and some that you have yet to experience including new beers to the Connecticut market.
YOU CAN WIN 2 FREE TIX TO NINETY9BOTTLES by telling us why YOU need to go, in the comments section below. Please include your email address so we can contact you. Winners announced May 31st.
Ninety9Bottles Craft Beer Festival will feature great LIVE MUSIC along with some of the area’s most popular FOOD TRUCKS including LobsterCraft, Bounty, Melt Mobile, One Bro Pizza Co. and The Local Meatball each serving up some delicious local fare.
Imian Partners will open The Beer Garden at Shippan Landing for its second season on May 21st. Imian first introduced the pop-up beer garden concept two summers ago with The Beer Garden at Harbor Point and is credited for invigorating the social scene in Stamford’s South End. The Shippan spot has a significantly more relaxed vibe than that of Harbor Point, but has all the charm and beauty of the perfect summer hangout.
With unobstructed waterfront views, (and the best seat in town to watch the sunset all summer long), The Beer Garden at Shippan Landing will showcase and rotate its carefully curated list of local craft beers on draft and in cans offering a variety of options. Look for favorites such as Half Full, Broad Brook, Captain Lawrence and more. We also hear that The Beer Garden will be partnering with Half Full to create a signature beer just for the garden. Pretty cool.
An impressive rotating lineup of the area’s best food trucks will also be part of the nightly festivities at the Beer Garden. Stay tuned for details on some of your favorite mobile eats.
The family-friendly environment will include outdoor games such as life-size jenga, corn hole, can jam and beer pong.Entertainment will include live music and special themed-events throughout the summer beginning on Sunday May 24th with a Memorial Day party.
The drinking population, increasingly located in cities as we carve through the invisible gelatin of time's future, has been separated from the earth. Beer taps in brick buildings reflect the light of televisions, and fluorescent light sears our retinas as we grab a shiny cardboard package from metal coolers. We obtain beer from chrome. The paradox is that brewing culture in the extravagantly digital 21st century has begun to bring us a little closer to the farm, and to the inextricable link between agriculture and beer.
Breweries were farms and farms were breweries, for most of human history. People fed themselves with what they grew and raised, but they also drank it, and the beers changed based on whatever crop was in season. We still drink the different styles of beer which resulted from these changes, but now we hardly ever see the farm. That's beginning to change, in food as well as beer.
Life is better when you're among friends, and people have been gathering together over a beer or a beer-like substance for thousands of years now. Everywhere there are humans, we gather in the sun, the shade of palm fronds, or under a warm tavern roof to enjoy a few drinks and catch up on what's new. We host bottle shares and beer festivals and, increasingly, brewers have been working together across brands to combine their experience, just to see what happens.
This week, Friday Froth is going to drink a few of the beers resulting from these evanescent partnerships between breweries. The beers themselves are friendship in a glass.
The waiter gave me a look that said "Dude - work with me here," because I was mumbling. It started like this:
Him: "What'll you have?" A perfectly reasonable question, and not an unexpected one, given that I'd just sat down. So I replied:
"Nmm nmm."
"What?"
"Nmm nmm... ee."
And that's when I got the look. So I said it louder, biting off each word:
"Nummy Nummy, please."
Dammit.
Look, I get it - it's fun to name your beer something ridiculous like "Buttface" or "Even More Jesus," but please, I humbly beseech you, the brewers of the world: please don't make it something I'm embarrassed to order in public. That said...
I like to let my face grow its own sweater for the colder months. Having a glossy layer of man-fur dulls the teeth of the winter wind, people seem to like my more avuncular look, and growing a beard takes slightly less work than shaving every day, so technically I'm conserving the planet's resources. You're welcome.
I've noticed the delicate liquid measurements, tweezing of botanicals, and arguing over the perfect shape for a single unit of ice has lead many adherents of cocktail culture to treat their faces like overly manicured topiary. There will always be respect and, above that, love in my heart for those who create finely constructed, strong and delicious cocktails, but an enthusiastic ransacking of my home will never turn up a single tin of mustache wax.
When I met Aaren Simoncini of Beer'd Brewing in Stonington, he was wearing a shirt that said "beer is art"and his beard didn't look like an aluminum foil swan full of lo mein. We nodded at each other and I approached.
What happens when you get the owners and brewers of five Connecticut breweries in the same room at the same time and ask them pointed questions?
There's a scene in The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou where Bill Murray, as Zissou, explains documentary filmmaking by saying "Nobody knows what's going to happen. And then we film it. That's the whole concept." I kept on thinking about that line as guests filed into a room at the Two Roads brewery in Stratford and watched Tony Pellino of OEC Brewing, Clement Pellani of Two Roads Brewery, Tyler Jones of Black Hog Brewing, Rich Visco of Shebeen Brewing and Conor Horrigan of Half Full Brewery take their seats in front of live mics. Whatever went down, it would all happen on the record.
On the record, in this case, means the proceedings would be recorded live for Ken Tuccio's Welcome To Connecticut podcast. The weekly podcast highlights businesses and personalities making an impact here in the Constitution State, and has previously broadcast with guests like Jerry Springer, Aaron Sanchez, Oh, Cassius!, the Nutmeg Curling Club, Miss Connecticut, and Anthony Bourdain's Russian sidekick, Zamir Gotta, among many others. The audio of the beer summit will go live on Thursday, March 19 on WelcomeCT.com, but CTBites was right there to bring you a first look.
Tröegs Brewing Company made its Connecticut debut this week at The Cask Republic, The Ginger Man, Coalhouse Pizza, Craft 260, Max Burger and other locations around the state. Troeg's, from Pennsylvania, has a large portfolio of highly rated beers which are welcome additions to the universe of options currently available in the Constitution State. This week's installment of Froth starts with Troeg's Nugget Nectar, one of the darlings of the current American beer scene, and a limited release for the late winter.
Nugget Nectar is a 7.5% imperial amber made with traditional European malts and fancy American hops. It pours the color of bourbon with an enticing meringue of head. There are very sweet, peachy hops to the nose, probably due to the Nugget and Simcoe varieties which make part of the hop bill, and a good balance of flavors to the first sip. The color is a faithful predictor of the maltiness in this one, but the fruity hop character is fully apparent early on.
Deep snow requires strong booze. Our ancestors knew it, we know it, and every year around the winter solstice we can see a certain class of beer made specifically for snow days start to take up shelf space. Barleywine is beer better served at 55º than 35º, and best enjoyed when it's 25º outside. It's usually sold in large format bottles of the 22-26oz. variety, and will wrap you in an invisible sweater of at least 10% alcohol. Blizzards are a good thing when you're properly stocked.
Barleywine has been deployed as a winter knock out drop by bored or insufficiently rowdy residents of the frostier climes for centuries. It is NyQuil by another name, and it is a blessed boon to those of us who seek to replace the lost hours of sunlight with - in order - hijinks and oblivion.
A California brewer reached across the country to attack Hartford's City Steam and, distressingly, they've won.At issue? Anchor thinks they own the word "steam." Regular Friday Froth readers may remember when I first mentioned the lawsuit brought by Anchor Brewing against City Steam Brewery Cafe almost a year ago. This week a judge ruled Anchor Brewing in San Francisco can force City Steam in Hartford to chance its name. The lawsuit was upsetting then, and it's dead-fish-on-a-hot-sidewalk repellant now.
I'm urging every craft beer drinker in Connecticut to boycott Anchor beer. Just don't buy it. It's that easy. Our voices and and dollars will be noticed. Just this week, Lagunitas dropped a similarly frivolous lawsuit against Sierra Nevada due to overwhelming consumer derision. Let's tell Anchor we in Connecticut are not going to take it laying down.
Recently there was some discussion on Twitter, that infinite forum for public opinion, as to what makes a beer Connecticut Beer. At issue was the newly released Sip Of Sunshine IPA from Lawson's Finest Liquids. SOS, as we'll call it, is brewed at Two Roads in Stratford, Conn., so Elm City Beer Lovers asked if it belonged on their "Best of CT Beers" list. The obvious catch? Lawson's Finest was established in Warren, Vermont circa 2009. So: does being brewed and sold in Connecticut make it a Connecticut beer you're drinking? It depends on what you think.
First, we have to consider how hard a line we're going to draw. Some beers are obviously capital C-B Connecticut Beers:New England Brewing in Woodbridge, Beer'd Brewing in Stonington, Relic Brewing in Plainville, Southport Brewing Company... all established, licensed, brewed and sold in Connecticut. Verdict: Connecticut Beers.
That's easy, but are beers like these the only ones worthy of the name? What's the orthodoxy here?
I like beers from Otter Creek and Jack's Abby, but their collaboration beer, Joint Custody, is a can full of nope. Thankfully it's also exceedingly rare, so chances are you'll be spared from drinking one. I don't usually talk about bad beer experiences in this column - and feel free to skip down to the two contrasting examples I give below - but this one's been nagging at me. 
