Microbrewed Adventures (13 page)

And as a final thought, “Being a good citizen is a big part of where we're going.”

 

THERE ARE
many other great microbreweries across America making extraordinary beer. Beer festivals are a good place to find out what is new in beer and to try new flavors and brewers' new adventures. I also recommend going to full-service beer stores that offer a wide variety of local and regional craft and microbrewed beers. In many states that are microbrew friendly you'll be permitted to embark on your own adventure by putting together your own selection of mixed six-packs of beers. Mix a six of stouts or a six of bock beer. Seasonal six-packs from favorite breweries become an anticipated annual adventure for many. See how many different types of beer you can select for a mixed case. Just as you taste wine from a particular region, you can organize your own tasting of great regional beers, and at far less cost than a case of great wine…. For starters, check out these two websites for more info on beer festivals and what's new in beer: www.realbeer.com and www.beertown.org.

A
T LEAST ONCE A YEAR
I try to take a beer adventure. Sometimes it's to Asia, Europe, Africa or down to South America, but more often than not I'm right in our American backyard encountering local beers with both hands at the ready. I've gone from North Dakota to Tennessee, the deep South, down East, the far West and all the way up to Alaska, tasting for the love of beer.

You might consider it part of a fairy tale or an evang-
ale
-cal passion I have to spread the word about the beer-wonderful world of flavor and diversity. Each trip is organized with the indispensable help of my association assistant Mark Snyder, who plans the details of every moment of the itinerary. But as beer is often a catalyst for digression, so is each trip. Every beer journey becomes a microbrewed adventure of meeting friends old and new; beers wonderful, mystical, complex and creative. Nowhere on the planet can you travel 100 miles and encounter so many different beers of such exquisite quality. It all becomes a blur sometimes. The line between homebrew, microbrew and craft brew evaporates. The journey simply becomes all about the beer. It's a journey I've taken often and look forward to each time. The following stories recount some of those classic moments on the road in pursuit of the ultimate beer.

Noon Moons, Midnight Sun
Bean Mead and Barley Wine Ales
Anchorage and Juneau, Alaska

W
ITH ONE BREWERY
for every 60,000 people, Alaska ranks as the state with the sixth-highest number of breweries per capita (Vermont ranks number one, with one brewery for every 36,000). That's encouraging information for the beer enthusiast living in Alaska. It's also encouraging information for all beer-loving Americans, for at these ratios, one might calculate a potential of 5,000 to 8,000 breweries nationwide.

Because I am a homebrewer and there are thousands of homebrewers in Alaska, I've had the great fortune to visit the state more than just a couple of times. Each time I depart I am in awe of the fanatical passion Alaskans have for both the environment in which they live and for microbrewed beer. People who live in Alaska live there by choice. It is a place they love and cherish. It isn't surprising, given this lifestyle and attitude, that they would demand quality and passion in the beers they enjoy. They are particular about their choices and they seek to explore life's pleasures. Inspired by their environment, I have discovered some uniquely brewed fermentations in Alaska.

On my visit in 1995, two of the first brews I encountered were made by local homebrewer Angie. While most brewers were pushing the limits of barley malt beers and fruit, herb and honey meads, Angie was floating in an entirely different universe. The midnight sun does strange things to the mind. Soy-milk mead and rice-milk mead were her specialties at the moment. At first, I recoiled instinctively as she introduced me to a glass. Recounting the initial fermentation as “milky white and curdy,” Angie assured me that with time and the passing of two equinoxes the mead be
comes a crystal clear, deep golden elixir.
Flabbergasted
is the only word I can use to describe my surprise at how mellow and smooth this bean mead had become. It was indeed some of the best mead I had ever had.

Hanging out at the Midnight Sun Brewing Co., Anchorage, Alaska

Sampling Barleywines at the Glacier Brewhouse, Anchorage, Alaska

Thus encouraged, Angie looked forward to her next experiments, with hazelnut milk. Confident that she could figure out how to make hazelnut milk, she took her inspiration from a reference in Robert Gayre's book
Brewing Mead
, where she found a reference to an ancient mead made with hazel-nuts.

I've had the pleasures of visiting and exploring parts of Alaska both in the seasons of the midnight sun and what might be called the high noon moon. Homebrewing in Alaska is prolific, and from this passion has sprung forth a culture of microbrewed beer. In Anchorage, Juneau and most large towns you'll find a good assortment of locally made beers, as well as other passionately made American microbrewed beer.

Summertime is work time, fishing time and being-outdoors time. It all then leads to winter and the Great Alaskan Beer and Barleywine Festival, held each January in Anchorage.

In 2001, Sandra and I arrived a few days ahead of the festival to explore
and to visit with local homebrewers and microbrewers. You can safely expect to be up before dawn, which isn't too difficult at that time of year, and to be having your first beer shortly after sunrise. What a wonderful concept! Anchorage is blessed with the likes of the Midnight Sun Brewing Company, Moose's Tooth Brewing Company, Glacier Brewhouse and the Sleeping Lady Brewing Company (the large hanging quilts are spectacular, and to see them is itself worth a visit). Makers of microbrewed and crafted brown ales, pale ales, barleywine aged in oak, stouts, porters and other world-class styles, the brewers of Anchorage are always anticipating the excitement of their annual festival.

Every brewery in Alaska is represented, including small homebrewery brewpubs from the coastal communities of Haines and Homer, the Silver Gulch Brewery from frigid Fairbanks (they brewed a lager) and Alaska's largest craft brewer, Juneau's Alaskan Brewing Company, brewers of a famous alder-smoked porter, a spruce tip–flavored winter ale and a popular top-fermented, cold-lagered Alaskan-style “alt” beer, Alaskan Amber.

The Great Alaskan Beer and Barleywine Festival is a must-do event for anyone who considers him-or herself a serious beer enthusiast. There are other similar events hosted throughout the United States, but none—and I say this from experience,
none
—embraces the passion of barleywine as much as does the Alaskan festival. The nights are very long. You may need crampons to navigate the icy sidewalks. It can be very cold. There will be snow on the ground. Your friends will think you are out of your mind for going to Alaska in January. But nowhere will a beer enthusiast encounter more camaraderie and excitement about beer than in Anchorage in January. Alaska's microbrewers are truly making their world a better place to live. Great barley wine enjoyed and savored in the bosom of winter is one of life's quintessential experiences.

Winter Warmer Tour
In the Footsteps of the Revolution

O
N FEBRUARY
22,
1999, my wife Sandra left our home in Colorado to embark on what I now refer to as “The 14-Day Charlie Does Beer–Winter Warmer Tour,” just one of countless beer journeys I've experienced.

It was an extraordinary expedition, filled with beer, beer and more beer to warm our souls as we wended our way through upstate New York, dipping down into New Jersey and back up through New York City, and continued to cruise for brews in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire. The snow, rain and cold always seemed to follow us, yet the beers and the hospitality of homebrewers and microbrewers everywhere warmed our hearts. Sandra was travel administrator and membership recruiter, while we both accepted and tasted beer all along the way.

 

Day 1:
Getting up at 5
A.M
. and continuing until we crashed at our Ramada Inn motel room at 11
P.M
. somewhere in Newburgh, New York made for a long day. Getting our flight upgraded to first class with a coupon was no great accomplishment; a fruit plate for breakfast, no lunch and no drinking water (they were out of stock!) developed our thirst for the beers that lay ahead. Perhaps the disregard for in-flight amenities was reverse karma intended to balance the good stuff that lay ahead of us. We hoped to be greeted with the best beers of the Northeast upon our arrival.

Winter is very, very cold in upstate New York. The wind blows. There's ice everywhere. But after checking into our motel and changing clothes, we soon found warmth wherever there was good beer. An enthusiastic reception of 40 or 50 homebrewers at Joe Burke's McGonigles Homebrew Supply Shop at 9 West Main Street in Washingtonville cheered us with an endless variety of homebrew. A quick dinner was followed by a very cold walk to the local homebrew club's meeting place. I was glad to be indoors and greeted with a winter-warming chilled homebrewed stout. The warm reception of my presentation and an endless variety of beer foretold of the days to come.

Day 2:
We drove along the eastern bank of the Hudson River on our way to Rhinebeck, New York, a town steeped in American history and contemporary great beer culture. Hosted by the local beer community, Sandra and I stayed at the Beekman Arms Inn, America's oldest continually operating hotel and inn. The second evening we indulged in a magnificent “Dinner with
Charlie” hosted by the St. Andrews Restaurant on the Culinary Institute of America's campus. It was a unique experience in their dining series, as all the beers on the menu were homebrewed by local homebrewers! For each of the six courses there were these beers: a 2 percent ginger lager (brewed by Lyn Howard), an English-style bitter (Anthony Becampis), Pre-Prohibition Pilsener (Jim Taylor), Malt-Tease Maerzen (Bruce Franconi), Robust Porter (Greg Holton) and Bit o' Spice Cider (Cider Maker of the Year, Gloria Franconi). Organized by Bill Woodring (American Homebrewers Association Board of Advisors) and Ken Turow (CIA Dean of Students), the evening was a celebration of pure and indulgent pleasure.

Arriving at our inn after dinner, Sandra and I turned to each other and asked, “How about one more beer?” “You bet!” We snuck off to the inn's bar for a nightcap before retiring. It was biting cold outside; snow covered the ground in moonstruck patches. We entered to the warmth of a fire in the hearth. A sense of something special filled the air. Here the low wood-beamed ceilings and antique floors captured the ambience of 250 years past. George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams and other revolutionary forefathers of America congregated in this very space and enjoyed locally made porters and other ales—I'm certain of that. The walls told me. The cold winter unchanged from that time to now.

It was quiet—well, almost quiet. Sitting in a wooden booth, we were the last two customers in the bar. The bartender and waitress were finalizing their evening's work. The floors creaked, the air was filled with the faint smell of smoke and the candles' flickering flames engraved their memorable glow upon us. The atmosphere was just as it must have been in 1766. But I couldn't quite connect with the lack of beer choice. I settled on an imported British ale but drank it with disappointment. It had lost its edge, just as the British had in 1776, suffering from the ravages of age and staling. Spice Girls and En Vogue hip-hop music thumped in the background…Old George Washington, I wonder how he would've handled it. He probably could have taken the hip hop, but stale English ale? No bloody way! George knew better. He made his own homebrew; this is well known. Beer passion inspires revolution as needed. I am glad to be part of the current American Revolution, a revolution championing beer flavor and diversity.

One small five-gallon batch at a time. Times a million American homebrewers inspiring the spirit of local microbrewed beer.

The next day, we visit the Gilded Otter Brewpub in nearby New Paltz. I am captivated by the spectacular $2 million view of the Hudson Valley countryside. Now this is a place that singularly made the revolution worth fighting for.

Day 3:
I have an early-morning telephone interview with Lee Graves, a beer columnist for the
Richmond Times Dispatch
about my Northeast tour. “When are you coming to Virginia, Charlie?” (I would tour New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia and the Carolinas the very next year.)