Session #6

Ladies and gentlemen,

Your beers for this Saturday's keg club session:

Brewery: Dogfish Head
Beer: Theobrama
Style: chile beer
ABV: 9%
IBU: 8
Description:

Theobroma is a celebration of chocolate, the food of the gods.

This Ancient Ale is based on chemical analysis of pottery fragments found in Honduras that revealed the earliest known alcoholic chocolate drink used by early civilizations to toast special occasions.

The discovery of this beverage pushed back the earliest use of cocoa for human consumption more than 500 years to 1,200 B.C. As per the analysis, Dogfish Head's Theobroma (translated into "food of the gods") is brewed with Aztec cocoa powder and cocoa nibs (from our friends at Askinosie Chocolate), honey, chilies and annatto (fragrant tree seeds).

It's light in color, not what you expect from your typical chocolate beer (not that you'd be surpised that we'd do something unexpected with this beer!).

Brewery: Boulevard
Beer: Rye-on-Rye
Style: rye beer
ABV: 12%
IBU: 47
Original Gravity (Plato): 22.5
Terminal Gravity (Plato):  2.8
Description:

Expressive head but not a foamer, three fingers high from a firm pour. Good dense and rocky formation that plateaus in the middle. Ruddy brown color, good clarity. First sniff is a clean waft of leftover barrel juice from the rye whiskey barrels and the spiciness from the rye seems to come from all directions. Smooth and creamy with a semi-thick body. Rye malt flavor has a firm grasp on the palate, from sweetness to spice to a toasted character. Heavy fume of barrel juice is quelled by the size of the malt character, lightly fusel within. The wood is there but does not pull to hard. Some barrel char and fruitiness add some depth and complexity. Finish is fun but chaotic with all flavors peaking, booze, wood, spicy malt, fruit, etc.

Wow, pretty epic ... an amazing twist on the barrel aged beer movement which is nearly commonplace in the craft beer world. Very happy to run into this bottle.

Session #4

Well Session #4 blew past back on April 21, leaving us standing in a cloud of rhythm and blues. We had our first (only?) hefeweizen of the summer season, Brooklyner Weisse, and already our second beer out of Brooklyn for the year. By the way, has anyone tried the Sixpoint Apollo yet?

Because I'm putting up the session 5 recap, and then the session 6 announcement up very soon, I'm going to give this one shorter space than it deserves. Glenn was a great host, Cene spun some really out there R&B, and I drank my weight in wheat beer.

Here's the brewery's pitch hefeweizens:    

Refreshing, light, and brisk, wheat beers have been popular in Bavaria for centuries. Weissbier or hefeweizen (wheat beer with yeast) was once brewed exclusively by the Bavarian royal family. In the 1800’s, they were popular among German immigrants to the United States. Our Brooklyner Weisse is brewed in the classic German style from German wheat and barley malts. Our special Bavarian yeast produces the flavors and aromas that wheat beers are prized for – bananas, cloves, and melon, with a smoky note in the background. This beer is traditionally left unfiltered, so there’s a dusting of yeast still in the beer, adding the hazy appearance and greater depth to the flavors. Pour, admire the big fluffy head, and enjoy sunshine in a glass.

(click the image for the Beer Advocate review)

Style: Hefeweizen
IBU Rating: 17
ABV: 5.1%
Beer Advocate Rating: 86

By the way, since I've been asked a few times about it, the Flavor Flav clock definitely belongs to Glenn as much as Cene probably wishes he had one to keep on his bedstand.

Session #3

KegLove session 3 is finally here, folks, and I hope you're all as psyched as I am to know we're only hours away from drinking some high quality beer. This round's been a long-damn-time coming since we skipped out on February, depriving me of the opportunity to pronounce it Feb-brew-ary without getting a dirty look from Laura. Sidenote: she hates poor pronunciation but she loves shitty puns.

So this is shaping up to be one of the best sessions yet with an excellent hostess, fantastic weather, and a great membership turnout. This month's beer pick went to Matt who pulled together a list of out-of-this world beers long enough to keep us happy and drunk for the rest of the year. But a little bit of luck and a lot of elbow grease and we narrowed down the pack. By the way, the blood and sweat of the search came courtesy of the owner/manager of Metro Wine, Greg Parikh.

The Bruery :: Saison de Lente

This is gonna be one hell of a fresh keg since we're just at the start of the distribution season, and you guessed it, this batch is specially brewed for Lent, I guess. So those of you who gave up alcohol this year can make an exception. From the brewer's site:

Our Spring Saison is light blonde in color with a fresh hoppiness and a wild and rustic Brettanomyces character. Lighter in color and alcohol than our Saison Rue, yet equally complex in its own way. Perfect for warmer weather and Spring celebrations.

Style: Saison/Farmhouse Ale
IBU Rating: 35
SRM: 4
ABV: 6.5%
Beer Advocate rating: 91

Mary being Mary, meaning she's awesome, my advice to you all is to bring an appetite. I believe we're having brisket sliders and Thai lentil soup. You like that? Well, damn, I know I do. But that's not all! There's another surprise assembled for you here this weekend: Mary's new double tap kegerator. And because there's two taps, there's two beers. Hot shit, we're on fire, folks. The backup keg's none other than Victory's Prima Pils. Think we can suffer through that?

To break even on this edition of KegLove, we're only gonna need to bump the price point up to a mere $12 per head. Cheers!

Links:
http://www.thebruery.com
http://bruery.blogspot.com/

Here's a video of staff at The Bruery discussing the production and planning behind their sour ales:
 
The Bruery - On Sour Ales from The Bruery on Vimeo.

Session #2

Session numero dos came and went, and I thought I'd share the brew with those of you who weren't able to make it to out in January. Well, I can't actually pour any for you because we drank it all, but you can read the Beer Advocate description here, and then decide if you'd like to go out and find it for yourself.

For those who did make it over to Dave and Kathleen's, I think we had a fine time, in a glass-half-full kind of way, considering how sorely we missed you no-shows but how happily we were fulfilled by Kathleen's soup, sausage, homemade bread and homemade sweet chili pepper sauce.

So, yeah, we had a fine time, missed those who couldn't be there, and drank a lot of Stillwater Ale's Autumnal.

Beer Advocate rating: 84
IBU Rating:
ABV: 7.2%

Stillwater's primarily brewed out of Baltimore by this guy:

Polling for KegLove Session #2

When you get the chance, go ahead and fill out the poll that's to the right. You can make any number of selections for the available dates just off to the right, and the results will update automatically after you hit the "vote" button. If anyone has any trouble with this option, let me know either by email or by leaving a comment to this post.

And just to keep you all in the loop, the January meeting is scheduled to be held at Dave's house on Calvert Street. More details forthcoming...

Session #1

Polling's closed, and while Oct. 17 won out by a slim margin, I've spoken to the few of you who were outliers on the poll and decided that the best day to pull off this shindig will be this Saturday at my place. It's going to be cold out, but I'm going to brave it to throw some burgers on the grill. For the meat I'll be using a set of special ingredients never before used that will be designed to fuse perfectly with the brew I've lined up for this month's proceedings. I may also just use whatever's in the fridge.

Place: Girard
Time: Dec. 10, drop by as early as 3pm and stay until the keg's gone
Quantity: 1/2 barrel keg (so bring your growlers if you've got 'em)

Our place is ground floor just above the basement apartment. The doorbell's broken, but you can give my cell a call or knock on the window that's to the left when you're facing our front door.

And now for the moment you've all been waiting for...this month's beer will be Diesel, brewed by Brooklyn's own Sixpoint Craft Ales. It's been released in cans for a short time now and only made its keg debut in DC this past week with a local premier at ChurchKey, and now we're getting a chance to try it out without having to fight the bar crowd.

And one last thought: if you don't own a growler and don't know where to pick one up, but you know you'd like to get one before we meet up, let me know, and I might be able to grab one for you while I'm out running errands.

[Click on the image to be taken to the Beer Advocate review.]

Beer Advocate rating: A-
IBU rating: 69
ABV: 6.30%

Description from Sixpoint:
As flaccid dark beers limp their way across the finish line, the Sixpoint Diesel powers itself to victory with extra horsepower. Should you expect anything less from "stout" beer?

The Diesel is our version of stout, and with a name like "stout" we needed something with character…something with substance. Something with a deep roasted flavor, something with a full-bodied toffee sweetness. Something with cleansing, citrus, and grassy hop bitterness after every swallow.

Diesel stout has actually been offered each winter since 2005, the year after Sixpoint was founded. Rich, robust and deep brown-black, this beer will linger in your mouth like a streak of tar. Yet it’s surprisingly sessionable and effervescent, too. It starts with nutty roasted malts, which get combined with Columbus and Northern Brewer hops. Another dose of Columbus in the dry-hopping stage gives it a defiantly hoppy character. Poured in a glass, the head becomes thick and cappuccino-like, with lacing down to the last sip.

New York Times article about Sixpoint.