WMBR: Pipeline

On May 27^th, 2014 I accomplished one of my life’s goals. My band, Grenades in the Archives, performed live on WMBR’s Pipeline. Pipeline is a weekly show run by Jeff Breeze that has been dedicated to local music for 25 years, and as they celebrate their run with 11 shows around town I couldn’t help but revile in my short time in Building 50. We were pretty fresh as a band, with a handful of shows under are belt, but Jeff had found our band, downloaded our 3 song EP and left it at the station to be played. After a quick email suddenly we were being asked to play on Pipeline. I was giddy, and the morning of I put on my WMBR shirt and just waited. We got there plenty early enough and sat in the student’s lounge drinking cheap (but good, Mystic Saison for 3 bucks!) and waited. It was excruciating, setting up before the show that starts at 8 and then waiting till 9 to play.

Once it started though it was all a blur. We were told we had about 45 minutes, we lasted 29. I don’t remember much about it, but luckily there’s a recording of all my terrible banter and the entire set of music we played. We were still rough, and my biggest problem was remembering lyrics, so sometimes they come out marble mouthed as I tried to remember everything I was spouting. The songs now have more texture to them as we’ve played them over the months and I wish we could relive that moment and play some of the new songs that I think have replaced some of our older songs, but I guess that’s what next time is for. We’ll have to come up with 29 more minutes of brand new material fully fleshed out and ready to roll. But who knows if they’ll ever ask us back. Hopefully.  

Karate: Unsolved

It was about 15 the first time I properly fell in love. Till then, I thought I’d been in love, but it was just a very strong liking. Then, in the back of an Oldsmobile, on a boring Friday night it hit me, the opening guitar solo to a song that’d infect my brain forever. My buddy had been flipping through the radio and stopped on a song none of us had heard before, but that cutting tone from the guitar caused the dial to stop instantly. The DJ rattled off what felt like 50 band names and I hoped I was able to figure out what I just heard.

“Karate.”

There were three of us in the car, but I was the only one of us that cared about that song and I was determined to find it.

I was a junior in High School in the year 2000, and I was certain Led Zeppelin was the best band of all time, with maybe Jane’s Addiction being a close second. Napster existed, but with my 56k dial-up modem I wasn’t really able to get very far. So to the record store I went, and in the year 2000, in the greater Boston area that meant one place, Newbury Comics in Harvard Square.

Mind you, I had no idea if this was even the correct band, or what album this song was from. But as I was sifting through the Karate CDs I had no idea what album this unnamed song came from. So it was a guessing game. I guessed wrong, and ended up with the Bed is in the Ocean, their previous album. For the record it was an amazing album, but after going back and trying one more time I got it right, newly released. Unsolved! You could smell that freshly molded CD when you unwrapped that cellophane.

I’m not going to plod over every track on this album, I’ve meandered enough as it is. Unsolved starts slowly, with two tracks right of the back that are almost a slow crawl, poetic and with wonderful guitar between even better bass and drum interplay. Then, after a small pause, that guitar solo that I’d been looking for blasts through the stereo.

Sometimes a guitar tone sticks out in my head. Steve Albini & D. Boon’s guitar tone will always be present in my mind. It’s the same with Geoff Farina, and never more so than in Sever. It’s a buzz saw in my brain, and I’ll dream of laying down a guitar track with that much substance with such little effort.

The Rest of the album is completely seamless to me, from The Roots and the Ruins with its amazing combination of a bouncy guitar, perfect backing bass and drums, with lyrics about a decaying system and trying to keep yourself afloat.  One Less Blues and Halo of the Strange have some of Geoff’s best vocal inflections, with Halo of the Strange having the 2^nd best guitar solo after Sever. This Day Next Year might be the most relaxing last song on any album I’ve ever heard, with a building guitar line that sits on top of some excellent drumming that ebbs and flows as the song reaches it’s climax, and then it’s over.

To me, this was one of the first perfect albums I’ve ever listened to. There have been many after, but this one really did it for me. It was the anthem of a summer of playing NHL on my Super Nintendo till 3am before I realized I had to go to school the next morning. Now it’s work, and it’s like 10pm, but it’s still wonderful.  

Ugh, Shiner Bock too.

I've been gone for almost a month from writing this, and even still I'm somewhat at a blank for what I'm supposed to write. How Gary Dzen from the Globe or Karen Cinpinski from the Dig churn out stuff every week is amazing to me. It's not like I haven't had some delicious beers, new stuff keeps churning out and new beers come rolling into Massachusetts, with Yuengling II, Shiner Bock, announcing they'd be coming to the state in late July.  Much like Yuengling I am sure it'll come in with a bang, being placed on taps throughout the city and the state only to slow up and hopefully get replaced by something tastier and local. Massachusetts is booming with new local breweries and while the allure of a much too sweet lager is tempting, there are so many better options for us to be drinking out there. Yes, Shiner Bock is better than Budweiser, much like Yuengling is, but being better than garbage shouldn't be an acceptable achievement. The sweet remembrance of getting wasted in College drinking this crap doesn't have to drive your wallet now. Life's not over, go drink new beers and make new nostalgia, and find a brewery nearby and get a growler filled there every few weeks and enjoy it. Oh, and request your favorite beers on draft at your favorite bar.

Smuttynose Brewing: Bouncy House IPA

Smuttynose Finestkind IPA was one of the first IPAs I ever grew to love. The first sniff of it on draft at Redbones in Somerville was a thing of beauty. Dank and weedlike, it was a bitter beast and I loved it. This was very early in the craft beer revolution for me, I was just 21 and beyond Dogfish Head and Sierra Nevada, I didn't know much about beer. But this beer was excellent, and readily available at the bar I ended up at almost every night whether I liked it or not.
Recently Smuttynose pulled up their roots and moved down Route 1A to Hampton from Portsmouth, NH. Along with moving they made changes to their year round beers for the first time in, removing their Belgian Pale, Star Island Single, and replaced it with a session IPA, Bouncy House. First off, I just hate this label. There's something about the colors and unleveled people floating that just make me hate looking at it. But labels don't make good or bad beer, so that's not terribly important at the moment.
What matters is the beer, and this is a lovely beer. Session IPAs are everywhere now, but most of them lack one important thing for me. Bitterness, and Smutty has never been shy about inserting some bitterness into a beer. Bouncy House is no different, with a nice blast of pine and grass with some lemony citrus cut in the back over a cracker like malt profile. But it has a bite, and it really does an excellent job of balancing the bright and vibrant hops with the bitter acids in the finish. Now if they could just tone down the label we'd be all set here.

Stone: Sprocket Bier

When I was around fifteen I discovered public transportation. After school I'd walk to Medford Square and catch the 96 (or 94, which took way too long) to Davis Square in Somerville where I discovered all sorts of new things. Guacamole!  Indian food! What the hell is this stuff and why didn't anyone in my family ever eat this? The other discovery for me were Aero chocolate bars, first given to me by a long lost British friend. Aero chocolate bars are amazing, with nice semi sweet chocolate that were incredibly light on the tongue, unlike anything we hand out on Halloween or I could find at grandma's house.
The first sip of Stone Brewing's Sprocket Bier reminded me of my first experience with an Aero bar. It pours a deeply dense looking beer, with a nice layer of fluffy white head that quickly settles. However, in true Kolsch style, the first sip is smooth and creamy loaded with notes of roasted coffee, chocolate and smoke. The rye settles in the finish to add a nice spiceyness to the smoke that lingers in the finish. You should seek this beer out for two reasons, one, it's unique, being one of the only black ryes I've ever seen, and two because it's incredibly drinkable and full of some pretty unique flavors and textures. And really, it should be drank because new things should always be sought out to be enjoyed, consumed, and appreciated. Who knows, maybe my Mom will get Indian food with me one of these days.

Hill Farmstead: Birth of Tragedy

Check out my sweet theme park.

I think the best thing about loving beer is having friends to drink it with. The other day I picked up a copy of a new board game I wanted, Steam Park. It's a ridiculous game about building a theme park for robots, and with a couple of phone calls I've got friends over each with bottles of beer in hand. This is usually how I end up with some of the best beers I've ever had. Case in point, my buddy Patrick brings over Hill Farmstead's Birth of Tragedy, an imperial porter brewed with honey and coffee. If you're unaware that Hill Farmstead makes amazing beers, then you really need to make the trip to Greensboro Bend, VT, it's worth hours of driving for both the beer and a beautiful Vermont countryside. So after opening a few other bottles we got to the highlight of the evening.
I could probably wax poetically about the taste of this beer for hours, but really, it's just bliss. Roasted coffee with a creamy and smooth mouthfeel, and a nice bourbon burn in the finish. This is the mouthfeel that every porter should strive to achieve, and it has the perfect balance of bourbon without overpowering it.
All tastes aside, this is what beer should be about, sharing it with friends while they earn more money from their robots than you do. I lost both games of Steam Park I played, but I got to drink Birth of Tragedy, so I'm doing just fine.

Everybody Saison!

Saisons might be my absolute favorite style of beer. They can be low in ABV and refreshing, drunk all day in the hot sun while BBQing in the backyard, they can be hopped forward for a lovely citrus or piney bite, they can be funky and tart with the right ingredient added, and they can just be Saison DuPont. No matter what, I typically love them. So I was thrilled when new saisons came in the same week. Just so I don't repeat myself, these beers all have very similar qualities, with nice sweetness mixed with some pepper, banana and clove. Saisons are all about the balance, so left take a look at three new ones. 

First up is Allagash Saison. Allagash has been making belgian style beers since 1995. I was 12 at the time. It's been a long and good road and they've just finally brewed a saison that will become their next year round beer. Everything about it screams orange, with a solid orange package, solid orange label, I think my brain even thinks it has an orange hue in the glass. I'm freaking out man!!! More citrus in the nose with pepper and clove at a minimum in the background, with little to no bitterness in the finish. 

Next up is Stone's venture into the world of saisons. They only make one year round belgian style, their Belgian IPA, but they recently made a smoked saison in tribute to a fallen co-worker, so there was probably some yeast laying around the brewery they needed to use up, bam! Stone Saison was born. Stone's reputation at first gets in the way of this beer for me. I was expecting hops. Stone has made its reputation on hop forward beers, so when I sunk my nose into it and it just had a slight banana bread smell, I was shocked. It's a very strait forward saison, painted by numbers, bottled and here it is. It's delicious, don't get me wrong, but I just built it up to be something different. 
Last one of the night was from Pawtucket, Rhode Island. La Ferme farmhouse. Much darker than the others, this farmhouse ale was made with half the farm, including oats, rye and some spelt thrown in for good measure. While it's fairly different from the others, this was actually my favorite of the three. It was packed with a nice creamy sweetness, balanced with both pepper and some of that rye spice and good musty hops in the backend. It's complex with flavors coming from all over the place. It's not really a traditional saison, but it nails all the other flavors so well. I'm kind of surprised by the result, but I guess this is why we drink them. 

Rising Tide: Zephyr

My biggest complaint in recent beer drinking history for me has been breweries that release their beer in 22oz bombers, and nothing else. And while some breweries manage to make bombers affordable, like the Tap in Haverhill, others consistently have their beers littering shelves and collecting dust because they're just priced too high for the average beer drinkers price point. Not every liquor store can pump through $8 buck bottles of Zephyr before they start fading into oblivion, and then when they have to close out cases because it didn't sell, they don't feel the same need to reorder and the brewery stops getting shelf space.
That was why I was so glad when I found out Rising Tide was switching to 4 pack bottles for their every day beers. (Yet 16oz cans of Maine Island Trail Ale will be only available in Maine this summer) As soon as I could buy a fresh 4 pack of Zephyr, it was in my fridge and just started calling my name. Easter Sunday, after a long day of driving around my brothers kids, and abstaining from drinking, I sat on my couch and cracked open a bottle.
Zephyr pours a beautiful hazy gold with a head that pops with pine and citrus. The taste has a nice sharpness to it that balances sweetness with those hop aromas, and finishes with a nice bitterness on the back of the tongue. Overall, it's a great IPA I can add to my rotation of easily available IPAs that I know will now be fresh, and importantly, pretty local.

Firestone Walker Double Barrel Ale.

It's been a great two week, my new band, Grenades at the Archives (as if anyone cares) just finished recording our first little EP and finally released it today. So here's a quick filler review before I get back to some real work. Here we go! 

Firestone-Walker Brewing Company recently decided to give themselves a facelift, and expanded the reach of some of their core brands in the process. One of beers that showed up was Double Barrel Ale. It’s an English Pale Ale fermented in two different vessels then blended together to make an amazingly drinkable beer. DBA isn’t going to knock your socks off with west coast citrusy hops; instead it’s blended together to make a wonderful drink of toffee and oaky vanilla. It’s a great blend of barrel-aged beer without the incredible heaviness that can come from outside of a barrel. 

Pretty Things: Grampus

When I was 16 we used to drive around aimlessly at night listening to college radio stations. Sometimes it was endless droning, sound experiments, lost blues music, or as it happened to be this one particular time, local music. A guitar cut through the silence and immediately I was in love. The song started with some buzz saw guitar solo and led into a talk/sing style verse with a build it up then cut it down chorus, then another killer guitar solo. I waited patiently hoping to find out what band it was. That band was Allston Rock City's own Karate, who'd end up being one of my favorite bands ever. That was the Pandora's Box of my slow and wonderful journey from alternative rock stations to listening to college radio at 3am and having substitute teachers tell me about shows at the Garment District in Central Square. Karate led to Modest Mouse, which led to Q and Not U and my favorite band of all time The Dismemberment Plan. 

So what the fuck does my rambling have to do with any of this? Pretty Things Beer and Ale Project was my Karate of sorts. I'd already been a beer fan, but when Pretty Things Jack D'or started popping up at all my favorite bars, it unleashed a long-standing love of beautiful beers, and especially locally produced brews. 

Jack D'or was the gateway, and I'm glad Pretty Things is still pushing the beer world with delicious and unexpected beverages. Grampus is just that, a Belgian style golden ale made with double mashing grain with the original wort, making for a much denser, sweeter beer that drinks a bit more like mead that traditional ales. The hops are nice, light and add a good crispness to help prevent it from being a massive sweet bomb, and while it straddles the line, it doesn't get pushed over the edge. It's really a beer that needs to be enjoyed with friends due to it's high booze content, 10.5%, and loaded with sweetness that makes for better drinking in small quantity. Now, if I could lobby Pretty Things to move to 12oz bottles I would love it, but that's an entire blog to itself. For now, I'll just enjoy the next Pretty Things beer that comes out of my fridge. 

Dogfish Head: Namaste

I remember buying a bottle of Namaste a long time ago and not being a fan. It tasted clunky, with many moving parts but lacking symmetry. I remember being overpowered with Lemongrass, like drinking a dry version of Lemon Pledge, and being incredibly underwhelmed by this beer. Maybe it wasn't fresh, or maybe I had the wrong food with/after but something didn't work. Tonight I got a bottle of the newly bottled Namaste 12oz and I think I was wrong.
Dogfish Head Brewery never seems to care about current trends in the beer market, between every brewery putting out their seasonal a season too early to everyone making a session IPA, Dogfish Head just carried on. They were already making a session beer, and though it's not a hop forward one, it is still a session beer. The problem? It was way too expensive. $11 a bottle. So they decided to rectify that problem.
Recently they released Namaste, a 4.8% witbier made with Lemongrass, Orange Slices, Coriander and Peppercorns, as a 6 pack offering, and immediately I wish I had more than the one bottle. The smell is a delicious mix of orange and spice, with some of that lemongrass and pepper funk. The taste feels like it'll be sweet, with the orange coming right at you, but it's immediately dry on the tongue, with some smokey pepper and coriander on the back of the tongue. Really, it's delicious. It's both soft on the tongue and full of flavors. Something I'm very glad to have in a fridge full of dense dark beers. And at $12 a 6 pack it's much more manageable on the wallet.

Bantam Cider Taproom Opening

If one thing has been made abundantly clean in this blog I've been writing is that I love when something wonderful is made locally. So when I read in the Weekly Dig (the only good local weekly left) about a Cambridge couple were making cider, naturally I wanted to try it. So I found co-founder Dana Masterpolo's email address and asked if they'd be distributing to West Concord. In short, they told me no, so the next obvious step was asking if I could just come and pick some up. So the next thing I know, I am on the street in Cambridge loading cases of cider into my truck. With it came a lovely sample bottle that I took home for the lady and myself to try.

Bantam Cider pours a pale straw color and is clearly very effervescent based on a nice head that dissipates quickly. The apple tastes up front are super light on the tongue, with notes of grapefruit and a dry grassy finish. Immediately I realize it's unlike any other hard cider I've ever tasted. Like an amazing Sauvingon Blanc made with apples. It was instantaneously the lady's favorite alcoholic beverage, and her obsession began. 

That takes us to last Saturday night, March 8th, Bantam Cider's Taproom Opening party. I had heard about it but had no idea when it was opening. An email to Dana goes unanswered, for good reason. Apparently it was opening that weekend and it was completely sold out. An email to a friend who might be able to help me out leads to another dead end as he tells me what I already know. It is sold out. Then, on Saturday afternoon, an email from Dana asking if I was still looking for tickets and that two people dropped out, so if I wanted in, I was in. So then there the I was, with the lady, in Bantam's brand new taproom. Bantam's taproom has an industrial feel to it, with stockpiles of barrels with aging cider, and a center bar with eight draft lines pouring 6 different ciders. The night had some food accompaniment with Union Square Donuts and some amazing chili served in a bag of Fritos, a take on the classic Frito Pie. And to finish off the atmosphere for the night they had a looped video of the making of the taproom, from bringing in tanks to laying floor tile on a giant projection screen. 

Bantam is making some amazing ciders in a variety of ways with wild yeast strains, barrel aged, blended with other ciders, with persian spices, and who knows what else. They're pushing the boundaries of what cider is, and they're doing it in my backyard. And while I'm pretty sure I'll always be a beer guy, Bantam is making drinking cider an equally exciting experience. I can't wait to go to the tap room and get a pint of something amazing and interesting once it finally opens to the public. 

Avery Dictator Series: Maharaja

How can I pass up a beer with Great Tiger from my favorite video game, Mike Tyson's Punch Out!, on the label? (Side Story: I bought Mike Tyson's Punch Out a few years back and without a second thought made it all the way to Tyson without even being knocked down, but ultimately failed at defeating Tyson. I haven't beaten him since I was 12 and I'm still trying.)
Avery's Maharaja is the second beer in their annual dictator series, apparently showing their brute force dominance over your taste buds. Maharaja is the bitter force, with Centennial, Simcoe, Columbus and Chinook hops blasting your taste buds with grassy piney hops over a sweet toffee backbone. And if you weren't sure of the smack the hops were hitting you with, then a nice alcohol warmth with soothe you into a winter slumber with the alcohol coming in easily above 10%. It's not a harsh alcohol either, just a nice warm feeling to balance out a bitter beast as it Tiger Punches you into bliss.

Surly: Abrasive

I'm not a huge fan of mail oriented beer trades, and it has nothing to do with being against it, but as I've mentioned a billion times, give or take, I love making the journey. But then again, sometimes my excess of one thing leads to me obtaining another. In this case a fine user from Beer Advocate offered me some excellent hoppy beers in exchange for some Goose Island Bourbon County Barleywine. Then, Bam! Surly Brewing Company's Abrasive Ale is on my table and I'm drinking it. Abrasive Ale has an impressive perfect score with over 2,000 reviews, so it's no joke of a beer. Canned on 1/7/14 it was also nice and fresh.  

Surly pours a nice dark amber, with a head that fills up the nose with citrusy hops jumping out of the glass. And it looks immensely sticky on the sides of the glass. Definitely a blast of Citra hops in this guy, not to mention some piney resiny hops to balance out a good fresh floral nose with a good bitter finish. The malty sweetness is pretty big as well, with nice caramel and a warm and toasty alcohol burn. It's an amazingly balanced beer despite being so massive, and it's hype is certainly warranted. Hopefully it ends up in Massachusetts sometimes, because I have no idea if I'll be in Minnesota anytime soon. 

Baxter: On the Count of 3

I fucking love canned beer, and one of the best selling breweries of the past few years has been Baxter Brewing. Baxter was the first brewery in New England to exclusively can their beer. They exploded onto the scene with their Stowaway IPA, a few years back and I was hooked ever since. It seems like just yesterday at Charlie's Kitchen I had my first Stowaway. Now, in celebration of their 3rd anniversary, they've released a very special beer. On the Count of 3, an Imperial Hefeweizen made with traditional German yeast but brightened with some excellent west coast hops.
I have no idea why my picture makes it look this dark, but in reality it pours a much lighter wheat color. The citrusy hops blend with a tart banana smell, a combination of the strength of the beer and the german yeast, which produces plenty of esters that give us that banana smell. It's the perfect balance though, with not too much banana, not too much booze, and an excellent level of hops. I know hefes are supposed to be lighter and drinkable, but this beer transcends it's brothers with excellent balance making it both easy to drink and complex in a finish. congratulations on 3 years Baxter, hopefully you'll have plenty more.

Hoppin' Frog: Barrel Aged Boris

No fun February is in full effect. What is no fun February? It's where I tighten up the purse strings, pay off all debts, and clear out some stuff in the cellar that should probably be drank. Enter
Hoppin' Frog's Barrel Aged B.O.R.I.S, an oatmeal imperial Stout aged in Whiskey Barrels. I've always been slightly weary of HF beers due to the high price tag, but shelling out $20+ for a barrel aged beer is completely different. Tack on a 96 rating from Beer Advocate and it seemed like $20 bucks was nothing. 

Me and Barrel Aging, or barrel aging and I have had a mixed relationship, with vanilla sludge and horrible wood grossness seeming to be the mainstream norm. But slowly I'm being broken down by excellently aged beer in whiskey barrels. Obviously Bourbon County, Jack's Abby's barrel aged beer, and now BORIS. This beer delivers in all the ways it should. 

This beer pours a wonderful black crude oil, with a mocha head that rolls up maybe half an inch before it fades. It drinks super creamy, with vanilla, coffee, roasty malt deliciousness and a distinct whiskey burn in the finish. As it warms up it just picks up a nice little heat from the barrel that adds even more enjoyment from this beer. There's nothing about this beer that isn't amazing, from it's creamy mouthfeel to the excellent sweet burn in the back of my throat. This is a beer worth seeking out and drinking now and I'm hoping I can drink it later too. When this cold long month is over I hope I can still find one somewhere sitting on a shelf, and I'll grab it without a second thought. 

Sometimes the Trip Makes the Beer

I’m headed to Jack’s Abby today to pick up the brewery only release of their Barrel Aged Framinghammer, one aged with coffee and one with vanilla, and it really got me thinking about how road trips are so important in beer drinking.

Hill Farmstead brewer Shaun Hill in a New York Times article recently mentioned his brewery would be brewing 150,000 gallons annual production and would cap production for the time being at that mark. Hill Farmstead’s beers will probably never leave his home state of Vermont (except for the occasional keg sent to various beer fests) and he seems just fine with that. So in order to get their beer you’ll have to make the almost 2 hour drive from Burlington. I’ve done this trip twice, once three years ago and once last year, and it’s been worth it every time. The two hour drive, with a return trip of equal distance only makes that beer that much better when you finally open the growler you bought, break out a nice glass and pour the first beer after your journey.

The journey for beer from the source to my lips can sometimes be incredibly long. Stone IPA begins its trip by being loaded into a shipping container in San Diego, driving across the country in a range of weather conditions before hitting a warehouse, being unloaded and then waiting for a salesman to key the case in, then it gets picked, loaded onto another truck, brought to the store and put on the shelves just waiting for me to wander in and decide, yes, today I’d like a 6 pack of Stone IPA. It’ll taste great, and I’ll be very satisfied with my choice. Sometimes though, it’s not enough, and I can’t always drive the 4 hours from my home to Hill Farmstead.

This is where local breweries are beginning to fit into a market they may not have known existed, trip destination. I can drive to Jack’s Abby in 45 minutes, and even closer Trillium Brewing is a 13-minute drive. 13! Sure, Jack’s Abby beers can be found at many beer stores, but if you want that prized whale you have to jump in your car and make the effort, and drinking that beer will taste that much sweeter, or bitter I guess depending on the beer.

Breweries are opening up all around the country in your backyard, trying to capitalize on two things, making great beer and your money. The best breweries will do both, making beer that’s worth seeking out and warranting a journey that pays off whether you’re driving 13 minutes for it, or 4 hours.  

America's First Trappist Beer: Spencer Trappist Ale

On October 26th 2013, Pretty Things Beer and Ale Project tweeted that America's first Trappist beer was in the kettle boiling. Every beer news outlet picked it up and soon after the hype was on! The Monks at St. Joseph's Abbey in Spencer, MA would be bottling the first beer made outside of Europe that would be branded with the authentic Trappist stamp. By mid December national news outlets like CNN and Fox News would publish articles about the beer being brewed in our backyard by devoted monks. 

Authentic Trappist beer must follow some simple rules. They must be brewed within the walls of a monastery, by the monks themselves or under their direct supervision.  The brewery is not to be used as a profit machine, but as a means to repair and maintain the monastery. And the beer must be of the highest quality. 

St. Joseph's Abbey, with help of many local and national brewers, including Dan Paquette of Pretty Things and the Monks of Chimay brewery in Belgium helped set up the equipment and the business model leading to a facility that if running at full capacity would make them the 2nd largest brewery in Massachusetts. As of right now though, they're hoping to sell 4,000 barrels of beer, or in bottles around 1.2 million bottles of beer this year. That's a huge order for a new brewery; even one with a higher power behind them.

On Monday we received our first shipment of this beer and as curiosity gets the best of most of us, I immediately took home a bottle and popped it open. The first smell is heavy banana with a heavy nose. The taste is delightfully sweet, with more banana balanced with a nice toffee sweetness and with minimal bitterness in the finish. For a first batch of commercial beer I think this is an amazingly well done and simple paters. They say that they're planning on brewing only one beer for the first five years but I don't see how that production can keep up without leveling off and the need for a new product makes itself impossible to ignore. We'll see though, we will see. 

Narragansett: Autocrat Coffee Milk Stout

I wish I was writing this while sipping on one more of these guys. But it's dead and gone. Gansett is claiming this was a one time release with Autocrat Coffee Company, a company that makes coffee syrup, one of my favorite drinks as a kid. It lead to my future love of coffee, and now my love, though fleeting, for a simple but delicious beverage, Autocrat Milk Stout.
This wasn't a beer like Oak Aged Espresso Yeti, but rather a nice 5% beer with nice sweetness and a roasted coffee flavor that lingers through the entire beer, so that once you're done you just want to crack open another right away. My mouth is watering just wanting another. If I see it on some dusty shelf at some backwoods convenience store that for some reason got a couple cases and then got ignored, I'll buy it all. It's not the best beer I've ever had, it's not even the best coffee stout, but it's so approachable, and you can just drink it over and over again. Find it and drink it, and it'll be gone.

Jack's Abby: Framinghammer

When Jack's Abby Framinghammer showed up in bottles this year I was extremely excited, for a few reason. One, this is a delicious beer that now won't require a 64oz growler fill for a 10% beast of a beer. Have trouble finishing a 22oz by yourself? Try 64oz's when the lady doesn't like drinking dark beers. The other reason I was excited for Framinghammer? That means that Coffee and Vanilla barrel aged versions can't be far behind. I missed out on them last year, and you can be dam sure I'm not missing out on a couple bottles this year.
As for this years base beer, Framinghammer reads like a blacksploitation tag, dark, sexy, smooth and dangerous, clocking in at 10% alcohol yet tasting like roasty coffee and chocolatey deliciousness. The smoothness of this beer is balanced with just enough hop bitterness in the back that it never gets boring, and never overpowers you're tongue with sweetness. At $5 a .5L bottle, it might be one of the best values you can get in Massachusetts. It's a classic in its style and reasonable to buy a handful of bottles.

It's Fucking Epic

Poor Gigazaur, you're dead because of me.

So somehow, last year, I managed to put away a bottle of Founder's Backwood's Bastard so that this year I could crack it open and compare to its "fresh" counterpart. It helps when I buy a massive purchase of beer so I can lose a beer in the mix. 2012 Backwoods was that beer. After that it was just waiting for the right moment.
Then I decided to play some King of Tokyo with two friends who love beer, and it seemed like a good time to bust out some aged deliciousness. (For the record, I've played 10 games of King of Tokyo and am an impressive 0-10, just saying.) We poured the fresh Bastard first, and the alcohol heat shined through along with excellent notes of sweet bread, vanilla and all those traditional other oak notes with a nice bitterness in the finish.
Similarly, the 2012 version was much less intense, with a more candy sweetness from the malt and no booze heat. The wood and vanilla was up front and the hops were faded away. This was an amazing smooth treat, blissfully sweet with lovely bourbon notes.
Taste preferences are amazing. Mike loved the fresh bastard, saying that while he hates bourbon, he loves the bourbon flavoring that the barrel adds this already pretty great scotch ale. Patrick and I enjoyed the aged version, enjoying the smooth malty sweetness and subdued oak that balances perfectly with the beer. All I really figured out is that one year of Backwood's Bastard fresh, or aged, is still just a delicious beer, and now if I could take Gigazaur to his rightful place as King of Tokyo I'd be happy.