So, here I am, in front of a shelf at a local “bottle shop.” I’m admiring a nice, if relatively small, selection of Goose Island beers. Beers I love to drink when I’m drinking locally.

Priced in Euros - More than I pay back home

But I wont be getting any of them. I believe in drinking locally.

I’m in Dublin right now.

So, I’ll be drinking brands like O’Hara’s, Trouble, and Eight Degree. And even Porterhouse (the largest Irish-owned brewery).

Guinness? Yeah, it’s brewed here, but, like Smithwick’s and Harp, it’s owned by London-based Diageo. Nevertheless, I’ll be drinking a bit of those, too.

So drinking Goose while I’m here wouldn’t exactly be drinking locally. Just as drinking Guinness in Chicago isn’t drinking locally. Or even Porterhouse (which is distributed in the Chicago region by Glunz) still isn’t drinking locally, even if you do hale from the ol’ sod. (FYI, the Glunz selection and distribution of Porterhouse beers is extremely limited – maybe someone will pressure them to carry the Oyster Stout.)

But Goose and other American beers are having their own impact. “American beers have a great reputation here; they sell well” said Mr. Butler, manager of the Drink Store, in the Stoneybatter neighborhood of Dublin. “We’re probably about where you Americans were ten years ago with craft beers.”

The Drink Store

We commented that many of the local beers were very malty. “Yes, we’re learning from you Americans, to not be so afraid of the hops.

As evidence of that, Smithwick’s just introduced its own Pale Ale, using, surprisingly, Amarillo hops – a typically American variety.

But am I contributing to my carbon footprint by traveling over here to Dublin to try the local Irish beers? Yes, of course I am – I took a big ol’ honkin’ jetliner to get here.  (It’s very tough to walk, or canoe, even, from Chicago to Dublin, to minimize the carbon footprint. Rowboats don’t work particularly well, either.)

So what’s the drinking-locally lesson? Perhaps Irish brewers will realize the American, no-holds-barred, phooey-with-tradition, try-anything approach will click with craft beer drinkers, and bring more Irish drinkers into the craft beer pantheon.

And then Goose and the other American craft brewers can retreat to serving their local-region craft beer drinkers, and let the Irish brewers serve their own with locally-Irish-produced, quality stuff.

We taught ‘em, they got it, our job is done here.

It’s doubtful that’s their strategy, but we can always hope.

Hey, you. Yeah, it’s me again. I told you about a little visit me and my boys made to FEW spirits a little while ago.

We went back.

Paul Hletko was dere, wit his fancy schmancy “Distiller” shirt on. The big door, where dey used to roll in the cars to chop ‘em up, was open. Paul had his back turned. Made it easy to walk out wit a little sumpin’.

See, da place is full of oak barrels. Dey uses dese barrels to age some of dere whiskeys. Da big guys, dey use da big barrels – maybe 30 gallons or so. But dis guy Paul, he’s new; he wants to get his stuff to market sooner. He uses smaller barrels to get more of the wood stuff into his booze sooner. And it works.

So, dere was an empty barrel there. Already used for his Rye Whiskey. Spoken for by some guy named A five gallon barrel. Poifect for some of the stuff our family’s been producing since the 1920’s. (See, in the 1920’s, if you wanted suds, you had to make the beer yourself. You could get cans of malt extract with instructions that said “Don’t do this, or you’ll be making alcoholic beer.” Not many guys dat we know didn’t do that.)

Dere’s a famous Three Stooges short (it’s wrong, but dey didn’t ask me for any advice … their mistake) with exploding bottles. Their excuse? “We all added the yeast.”

Hletko didn’t need the damn barrel anyways. He can only use dose barrels once, for his whiskeys. But it’ll be good for beers. Maybe a rye stout.

Y’know all those videos that Ken Burns made millions off of, of guys trashing barrels for his Prohibition show? Well, dis is one Ken Burns won’t be filming. We’ve stashed away the barrel where even Ken Burns can’t get to it.

But don’t tell anyone that we let dis Hletko guy swipe our credit card before we ran out wit the barrel. We guys have a reputation to uphold.

Not really an investment portfolio

My recent story on “Local Beers as an Illiquid Investment” got a bit of reaction. That story commented on the practice of reselling rare beers. The intent of the story may have been misunderstood. Forgive the length of this treatise, but it’s a complicated issue.

First, the comments:

From Yep, on 2012/03/26 at 3:27pm

Tom, you are the scum of the industry. It’s the lowlife idiots like you who make rare beers the hyped frenzy-producing entities that they currently are.

You’re a dumbass to write an article about this practice, as it is universally shunned by the legitimate beer community. Not only do people like you drive up craft beer prices, they also reduce purchasing options for the consumer since breweries have stopped bottling and allowing growler fills of “rare” beers, to prevent the secondary market.

You should be ashamed of yourself.

From Jimmy on 2012/03/26 at 1:40pm

This is the most despicable piece of advice on investing I have ever heard. You are recommending that people invest in beer that they then need to send and ship ILLEGALLY. Also, your small animal big machine isn’t selling because you could have also bought it directly from De Struise. In order to prevent scumbags from reselling their beer on EBAY they have started their own webshop so I guess you might actually have to drink those beers you douche.

From Eric on 2012/03/26 at 1:32pm

Wow, please do not listen to this person. If you are purchasing rare / hard-to-find beers, solely for the purpose of re-selling?

1. You’re going against the wishes of the brewers who work hard for you to buy and enjoy this beer.

2. You will become reviled in the craft beer community, ensuring that if you’re seen at a beer release… well lets just say you won’t be very welcome.

I feel like I shouldn’t even have to explain this, but come on people. Don’t be a douche.

————–

Obviously (or maybe it was not so obvious to some) the article was written, as many of my others are, with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek. I have never re-sold a beer or a ticket to a beer event on eBay, or any other venue, and I have no intention of doing so. (In fact, the Dark Lord bottle on the right was shared with friends last Saturday.)

That said, if I have to get serious for a while, there are several points that warrant discussion.

1)    eBay’s loophole regarding selling alcoholic beverages based on the value of the package, and not the contents, is clearly a ruse — it’s an excuse to allow eBay sellers to sell alcohol directly, circumventing licensing regulations for retail sales of alcohol. But, to my knowledge, no regulators or states’ attorneys general have chosen to pursue the issue of rare beer sales on eBay. The cost of pursuing it, for the tiny handful of bottles that go into any given jurisdiction, may not be worth their time and effort. They probably have more important issues to pursue.

2)    The brewing community has mixed feelings about the practice. Some, like Natalie Cilurzo of California’s Russian River Brewing, disliked having an eBay listing of their well-regarded Pliny the Younger Imperial IPA, contacted eBay, and had the listing removed. Others, like David Walker, Co-Owner of Firestone Walker Brewing, compared the practice to reselling fine wines, saying “Who’d have thought a bottle of beer would be valued at $100 plus. It is an affirmation that there is real passion for beer out there.” Most brewery owners whose products have appeared in the secondary market haven’t commented publicly, but also haven’t taken the steps Cilurzo did to get the listings removed — which might be considered tacit approval of the practice.

3)    Breweries have the right to set a price point for their products wherever they desire. Three Floyds (to use them as an example) could probably sell out Dark Lord at, say, $40 a bottle (although there would undoubtedly be some grumbling), instead of its current price of $15. That would reduce the incentive to resell the beer on eBay, because, based on online sales, its true market value is somewhere in the $50 to $100 range. If the true market value is, say $60, and if the original price per bottle was $40, that’s a much smaller profit potential than it is at the current sales price of $15. So why does Three Floyds choose to sell Dark Lord at less than its market value? I’m guessing it may involve a couple of reasons: a) Three Floyds feels they can make an adequate profit selling Dark Lord at $15; and b) the lower price helps keep customers happy — it’s a “thank you” for their loyalty. If someone buys a bottle of Dark Lord, it becomes that person’s property, and Three Floyds doesn’t suffer financially if that beer is subsequently sold at a higher price.

4)    Three Floyds (and others) could make Dark Lord, and the others could make their rare beers, year-round. By making them available only briefly (and in the case of Dark Lord, only through a relatively onerous ticketing system) they control the scarcity of their beers, adding to their cachet, and upping demand (i.e. frenzy-producing). It’s different than the case of rare wines. Wines can be relatively variable based on the growing conditions of the grapes, which can be different every year, affecting the resulting product. Hops and barley aren’t subject to the same variables in terms of the quality of product they can produce; the scarcity of these rare beers is largely based only on the breweries’ marketing decisions.

5)    Relatedly, many rare beers are distributed only in certain geographic areas. If you want a bottle of Bell’s Hopslam, but you live in Boston or San Francisco, and you don’t want to buy a plane ticket, acquiring it from someone online may be your only option.

6)    eBay is not the only option for acquiring rare beers online. Ratebeer.com and Beeradvocate.com both have forums dedicated to trading rare beers with other craft beer aficionados. Most trade proposals involve individuals from disparate areas of the country trading for beers they can’t get locally, but in a few cases traders have admitted they purchased certain beers for the sole purpose of trading them for beers they really sought. There’s a fine line between paying for someone else’s beers with another beer that person never intended to consume, and paying with cash.

7)    The breweries actually benefit in some ways by having their beers resold on eBay and other venues. It may not have been designed that way, but it’s turned out to be a brilliant marketing move. The word of mouth created by someone opening a Dark Lord for friends, and being able to tell them “this stuff sells for $100 bucks on eBay,” makes it seem even more special. It also creates a halo effect for Three Floyds’ other beers — it creates a buzz around everything Three Floyds does. That may be one reason why most breweries don’t contact eBay and ask them to take down the listings. In fact, there are unconfirmed rumors of breweries releasing limited edition beers, but holding back a few bottles to list on eBay. Are they just trying to create more buzz, or are they simply using eBay as a tool to determine the true market value of their beers, for the purpose of establishing pricing levels for future limited releases?

I had a brief conversation with Pete Crowley about some of these issues yesterday afternoon. He’s the owner/brewmaster at the highly acclaimed Haymarket Brewpub in Chicago’s West Loop, and President of the Illinois Craft Brewers Guild. He compared reselling rare beers to scalping tickets for concerts and sporting events. Scalpers make it tougher for true fans to get opening day tickets at Wrigley Field, just as scalpers were a factor in the rapid sellout of Dark Lord Day tickets. “Craft beer is all about sharing, and celebrating the craft beer culture. If someone’s able to share by going online, that’s great [referring to trades on Ratebeer and Beeradvocate]. I just don’t like it when someone buys a craft beer for the wrong reason … solely to turn a profit.” But what about the guy who couldn’t get through to purchase Dark Lord Day tickets, but really wanted to go? Crowley doesn’t appreciate the sellers who purchase tickets only with the intent of reselling them at a profit, but for the guy who wants to get tickets, even at an inflated price, “Well, a guy’s got to do what a guy’s got to do.”

So, it’s a complex issue. People who purchase rare craft beers for the sole purpose of reselling them at a profit are generally, but not universally, reviled. But these people wouldn’t exist if breweries didn’t sell their rare beers at less than their true market value — which is, in part, impacted by their own limited-release policies. In general, there’s a more understanding view toward buyers — they’re just trying to get their hands on something they think has value to them at or above a stated price. Hardcore critics, though, condemn buyers for supporting the sellers.

And that’s a very long, laborious exposition of what was intended to be a light-hearted look at the practice of re-selling craft beers, in the previous article.

There’s a very interesting academic study of beer re-sales here: http://ratebeerians.hoppress.com/2011/04/18/market-behavior-for-rare-beer-ebay-auction-prices-in-review/

Finally, I’ve never been called the “scum of the industry” before. It’s an honor to know I touched a nerve.

I’ve invested in local beers.

Part of my investment portfolio

With friends, we had several computers going at the witching hour of noon on St. Patrick’s Day, for a chance at two of the available 6,000 tickets required to get you on the property; tickets that give you the right to purchase several bottles of the 2012 edition of Three Floyd’s legendary Dark Lord Russian Imperial Stout. Tickets sold out within three minutes, but within an hour the $15 tickets alone — which only let you in, you still have to purchase the beer — were being auctioned on eBay for $495 a pair. Bids for the tickets were running over $800 per pair at last check. That’s a potential 2,666.7% return in one day. Even Bernie Madoff couldn’t pull off that kind of return.

But I’m not selling the tix. I want the beer.

Last year, after being lucky enough to acquire a couple of tickets, I spent several hours in line in Three Floyds’nondescript industrial park in Munster, Indiana. It was a fun time — some described it as a mini-Woodstock.

I left with four bottles of the precious Dark Lord Russian Imperial Stout. $15 each. Similar bottles are listed on eBay now for between $50 and $100 per bottle. At the low end, that’s a 333% return. I consider myself very lucky if any of my accounts at Fidelity Investments do even one-fifth as well.

EBay’s policy on these sales is that the value of the item is in the collectible container and not its contents, the container has never been opened and any incidental contents are not intended for consumption, the item is not available at any retail outlet, and the container has a value that substantially exceeds the current retail price of the alcohol in the container.

In the words of Monty Python, “Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more.”

But it’s not limited to Three Floyds. My Goose Island Rare Bourbon County Stout (paid $42 for the bottle) is now listed for $78, an 85% return. A bottle of Bell’s Hopslam, for which I paid $18 for a six-pack two months ago, is now going for $34, an 89% return (or 1,133% on an annualized basis). And the Bell’s Batch 10,000, which was also $18 a six-pack, is now listed for $15 a bottle, a 500% return.

We’re fortunate in our region to have Ratebeer’s three best breweries in the world: Three Floyds, Founder’s and Bell’s. Because if you’re going to invest in beers, you need to get less-common releases from well-known breweries.

Which brings me to the basic principles of beer investing:

1) Buy beers from breweries that have good cachet. In addition to the three above, New Glarus and Goose Island (especially Bourbon County Stout releases) frequently get premiums for their limited releases.

2) Invest in only big, high-alcohol, age-worthy beers. No one wants a 1997 bottle of Old Style.

3) Buy limited releases. The harder they are to get, the better. Anyone who can get through during the three minute window to get Dark Lord Day tickets, and then wait in line for a couple of hours to buy the beer, deserves a significant return for the time and effort.

Other breweries have caught on to the Dark Lord Day model; it’ll be interesting to see if they can get as much traction out of the one-day-only style of selling their beers.

It doesn’t always work, though. I still have a couple of bottles of Small Animal Big Machine, a collaboration from Half Acre, Pipeworks, and DeStruisse. It’s a great beer — I had to wait in line to get it — but there’s no online market for it. I’m guessing that Half Acre, Pipeworks, and DeStruisse don’t have the name recognition of Three Floyds et al among beer collectors. I might actually have to drink it.

Hey, I might even give you a bottle or two … in return for a generous annuity.

I wuz wit my dame, see, and we’d heard about this little place making some really cool hootch. That was hot.

She pointed me to this little alley off of Chicago Avenue, in Evanston. Hip little neighborhood. Half block north of Main Street. Nice. But not where you’d expect to find a joint making fresh booze.

I said naw, dammit, there couldn’t be anything down there, except maybe a car chop shop … or maybe a blackjack upside the head.

She was insistent. Wit a strong-willed dame like that, you don’t argue much, at least if you know what’s good for you.

There was a sign. It said: “FEW Spirits.”

We found a door. It creaked open. (Nah, it really didn’t creak; they must have gotten some WD-40 from somewhere. I didn’t ask where. In these situations, you don’t ask much.)

Inside wuz a guy wit a big smile on his face. I been around long enough to be suspicious of any guy with a big smile on his face. But maybe he’d just been sampling his hooch.

Dis guy, Paul, had “Master Distiller” on his shirt. I’d heard from some guy in the joint he wuz a lawyer. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate lawyers. Some of ‘em got me out of some, shall we say, incidents. But most of the lawyers I’ve known have only kept a flask or two in their desk. Dis has gotta be the only lawyer wit a high-falutin’ distillation still behind his desk.

But he used to work wit the Illinois Liquor Control Commission, so he knows his booze.

He got dis fancy schmancy still from the guys down at Koval Distillery, in Ravenswood, Chicago; they seems to know guys in Germany who make special stills. None of those Appalachian homemade still things going on here. Dis guy runs a quality operation. But he makes you pay for it. Even a coupla Jacksons won’t get you a bottle. At least, not legit.

I got a White Whiskey from the guy. Paid big. It’s smooth. He makes a gin, too, on the other side of the still.  He claims it’s a genever-style gin, but since when does a gin include hops from Paul’s backyard? Dis guy’s over the top. We might need to deal with him. Especially when he puts out a brown whiskey (Evanston’s 400 miles from Bourbon County, KY, so it ain’t really bourbon) and maybe a “single malt” (it’s not Scotch, since even the Hebrides is almost 3,700 miles over dere).

He’s also put out a barrel-aged gin. Who ever heard of a brown gin? Yeah, we might need to give this guy a little visit, and “explain” what’s right.

Dere’s only a couple other guys making hootch legally in the state. One is those guys at Koval (dey include the guy named Lion — he helps distill, but dammit, I don’t think this guy is old enough to drink it yet. Maybe they put a bit of their stuff on his gums if he cries.) The other’s in Lake Bluff, North Shore.

Dis guy’s got a sense of humor, though. You think FEW stands for the FEW guys distilling in Illinois? Or the FEW guys who can afford his stuff? Take a hint from me, my friend. It’s a wink to Frances Elizabeth Willard, who ran the Women’s Christian Temperance Union in 1879 from her joint right up the street in Evanston. She hated booze. She and her girlfriends are prolly turning over in their graves. Hah!

Me and my boys still might pay a little visit to 918 Chicago Avenue in Evanston one of these Saturdays, maybe around 2 or 3 in the afternoon. We might need to get a little taste of what this guy Paul Hletko is doing, if you know what I mean.

This is what Nick sees every morning when he goes to work in an undistinguished industrial park in Munster Indiana

An open letter to Nick Floyd:

C’mon, man. Share the stage a bit.

I know that Three Floyds’ recent ranking on Ratebeer as the number one best brewery in the world isn’t your fault — blame the average scores of the 3.5 million beer reviews by true beer aficionados on that site. But, world’s best for the fourth year in a row? And five out of the last six years? Give it a rest. Maybe you could turn out at least one crappy beer to drive your scores down just one notch.

How about a Miller Lite clone?

Certainly, there are other brewers in the region you could share that crown with. Hell, just one state north, in Michigan, Founders (Grand Rapids) and Bell’s (Kalamazoo) came in as the second and third best breweries in the world. Maybe you could give one of those guys a shot at #1.

Sure, your Dark Lord came in as the 13^th best beer in the world. But you’ve gotta respect your fellow local brewers, like the guys at Goose Island. Yeah, they’re owned by Anheuser-Busch now, but that doesn’t diminish the fact that their Rare Bourbon County Stout came in 10 slots above your Dark Lord, as the third best beer in the world. (The best was from someplace named Westvleteren Abdij St. Sixtus … it barely counts, because the brewery name is too hard to spell.)

I do have bottles of Goose Island Rare Bourbon County Stout and the 2011 version of Dark Lord in my beer cellar. In a year or so, I might let you know how the two compare head to head.

And, Founders’ Kentucky Breakfast Stout (fourth best beer in the world), and Bell’s Hopslam (sixth best) also beat out your Dark Lord. Last spring, I had to jump on your website within the four minute window for the right to get tickets to purchase your Dark Lord, then wait in line a couple of hours at the brewery to get a measly four bottles. (It was a helluva party, though.) For the Hopslam, all I had to do was carefully time my appearance at the local liquor store and fork over $18 for a sixer.

Maybe you could let Pete Crowley have a shot at the limelight. His Haymarket Pub & Brewery (West Loop, Chicago) was rated #3 in the world among the 1,473 new breweries that opened in 2011. As far as brewpubs go, yours was beaten out by Pete’s Haymarket, and also by Revolution, in Chicago’s Logan Square. (Love the Scotch eggs at your place in Munster, though.) Look out, though, Villa Park’s Lunar Brewing is right on your heels.

Pete Crowley has fun with sanitation

So, please, give it a rest. I’ll make it worth your while. If you come in  #2 next year, c’mon up here to Evanston and I’ll buy you a beer. Do you like PBR?

There will be another batch of Local Beet beer coming out (it was Editor-at-Large Rob’s idea – blame him, not me).

We’re trying to figure out a way that you, dear reader, can sample some, perhaps in conjunction with The Local Beet’s upcoming anniversary.

It was late summer, 2009, that I made the first batch of Local Beet beer. I bored you by writing about that journey here, and here, and here, and here, and even here.

Fresh, in 2009, the color was pretty good.

I’ve kept a few bottles around. When it was fresh, the color was beet red (obviously). It’s now more amber, suggesting that the betalain pigments that give beets their deep red color degrade over time in an acidic environment like beer. Except for a slight beetiness in the flavor, you might think you were drinking a Scottish Ale – say, a 70 shilling heavy.

A few lessons I’ve learned. For one, there’s no need to mash the beets – mashing is used to convert malt and other grains’ starches to sugar for the yeast to nibble on; the sugars are already present in the beets. So I’ll just add beet juice to the secondary fermentation for the flavor and color.

For another, I learned that the true flavor of beets is based on a balance of earthiness and sweetness. Once you ferment something with beet juice, the yeast converts the sweet beet sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide. The remaining pure earthy flavor isn’t especially appetizing. So the sweetness has to be added back. Adding sugar would just further feed the yeast; it would up the alcohol content, but wouldn’t add sweetness to the end product. In the 2009 version, I used aspartame (I’ve had a long professional relationship with aspartame). It’s not fermentable, but some people aren’t comfortable with that combination of naturally-occurring aspartic acid and phenylalanine. It did add the needed sweetness, though.

For this batch, I’ll be adding lactose. It’s a milk sugar; it will add sweetness, but beer yeasts will ignore it.

So, the 2009 version wasn’t good for people with phenylketonuria.

The 2012 version won’t be good for people with lactose intolerance.

And, by the way, both contain gluten from the barley used in the mash, so they’re not good for anyone with Celiac disease.

Hell, it’ll probably be too dangerous for anyone to drink. I just might keep it all for myself.

Lately, though, we’ve turned to the season where all the landscaping firms are attaching snow plows to the front of their pickup trucks, and families are starting to think about how nice it would be to burn a few logs in the fireplace (high-rise denizens … sorry about the lack of real fireplaces).

It’s a time to sip, and a time to contemplate everything the season represents. So, by definition then, it’s a time for winter beers.

What is a winter beer? One easy definition is that it’s anything that has “Winter” or “Christmas” on the label. But typically, they’re darker beers, usually with a higher alcohol content than lawnmower beers – say, 6.0% ABV or higher. (The alcohol content is part of the reason these beers are often called “Winter Warmers.”) And if “Christmas” is in the name, or hinted on the label, the beer may be flavored with some of the same herbs and spices that might also be used for a mulled wine.

Is it just a gimmick to sell some different beers during the cooler months? Maybe, but it does have a historical precedent.

“In New York, and also in some other of the middle colonies, it was customary before the revolution, to have brewed a sufficient time before the holyday season to give it due age and strength, a large quantity of what they called “right strong Christmas beer,” so says The United States Democratic Review, Volume 3 , Making of America Project 1854.

And perhaps the tradition is even older. The holiday tune “Here We Come A-Wassailing” refers to hard cider with spices and herbs. But possibly even prior to that, ”Good King Wenceslas” in the 13^th century restricted hops sales outside Bohemia, so brewers found all sorts of other herbs and spices to flavor their beers. (And, of course, beer was a drink of choice then, since, being boiled, it didn’t have the bacterial load that “fresh” water had in those days.) It’s unclear, but Wassail may have referred to beers then, too. (Thanks, beerhistory.com.)

Whatever the history, it’s a trend the craft brew industry has fervently embraced. So, strictly as a public service to you, dear readers, I forced myself to sample a random number of local or regional winter or Christmas beers. A few notes:

L to r Summit Winter Ale, Goose Island 2011 Christmas Ale, Three Floyds Alpha Klaus, Bell's Winter Ale, Leinenkugel Fireside Nut Brown,Goose Island 2009 Christmas Ale, Sand Creek's (Beaver Falls, Wisconsin) Lilja Sasquatch Stout

Chicago’s Goose Island’s 2011 Christmas Ale – a brown ale – doesn’t seem to be spiced much, but has a tan, short-lived head, and rich caramel flavors with a big mouth feel. It comes in at 6.2% ABV. According to the bottle, it’s ageable up to five years (which Goose typically puts on its better beers, but many may benefit from even further aging, as I noted here). In the eloquent evaluation of a friend, “Hey, this stuff is pretty good.”

Goose Island 2009 Christmas Ale – “dreams of Christmas past” – is still available at selected stores. It definitely demonstrates the value of cellaring a beer for a couple of years, with its rounded, rich, roasty flavors and light tan, long-lasting head. Goose tweaks its Christmas ale recipe every year, so anyone with four or consecutive five years of Goose Island Christmas Ales should contact tkeith@thelocalbeet.com immediately.

As good as those are, possibly the best of the area’s winter beers is – not surprisingly – from Munster Indiana’s Three Floyds.  Alpha Klaus, described as a seasonal relative of its signature Alpha King, is an Imperial Porter, redolent with American hops, a light brown, long-lasting fine-beaded head, and a roasty finish that might last all night long, or at least until a Mr. Claus falls down the chimney. As a big, dark beer, at 7.5% ABV, it’s no wonder that Ratebeer gives it the rare rating of 100 out of 100 points.

On the other end of the scale, Kalamazoo, Michigan-area’s Bell’s Winter White Ale is a winter ale in a Belgian witbier style. That is, it’s a bit hazy, full of citrus and banana aromas, and relatively light and refreshing at 5% ABV. Worth checking out.

But not all winter beers as impressive as these. For instance, Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin’s Leinenkugel’s  Fireside Nut Brown (“Beer with natural flavor”), now from MillerCoors’ Tenth and Blake subsidiary, has, to its credit, a dark, prune-y flavor, roast burnt aroma, but at 4.9% ABV it’s not enough to support the additional thin, flat, hazelnut character. They’re playing it safe.

Also, as they say, “beyond the Cheddar curtain,” Hinterland Winterland is a porter brewed with a subtle touch of juniper berries. A nice, dark beer without too much spicing (after all, it’s beer, not gin). It’s brewed right across the street from Lambeau Field, so this could well be the beer for fair weather fans who want to jump on the bandwagon of a football team that’s having a particularly good year. (As a life-long Cubs fan, I’m used to struggling through difficult times. I’ll struggle though this year’s Bears season, too.)

A few others … Local Beet fave Metropolitan had a holiday-spiced version of its Dynamo Copper Lager at Michael Diversey’s (670 W. Diversey, Chicago); there might be a bit of it left there, or possibly at other premium beer bars around town.

And, December 16 will see the release of Chicago’s Half Acre’s Big Hugs Imperial Stout. If you can wait in line at their Lincoln Avenue store (4257 North Lincoln Avenue  Chicago), do it, otherwise visit the Blind Robin (853 N. Western Ave., Chicago, for its initial pouring on draft.

Let me know how many local seasonal beers I’ve missed.

UPDATE: Big Hugs Imperial Stout has been a big hit. In three days, over 75 ratings have come into Ratebeer, and raters are using language like “Tasted like crazy layers of citrus and spice, dates, fruits, chocolate of course, coffee, roasted perfectly,”  “Deep roasty aroma with hints of coffee/espresso bean, silky chocolate malt, molasses, caramel, toffee and hazelnut. I’m also picking up some slight lactic cream, burnt toast and subtle hops, “  and  “Overall, this is an intense coffee experience that only becomes thicker and more coffee-like as it warms. An amazing beer, I’m starting to become a big fan of Half Acre…” It’s received a rare rating of 98 out of 100.

I’m also increasingly impressed with what Half Acre is turning out.

Bah. Humbug. (Oh, wait, that’s for Christmas. I’m getting ahead of myself. Local Beet editor Rob asked me to write something about beers for Thanksgiving. Oh, well.)

I’m not doing much of a Thanksgiving this year. I’ll probably just go out to a restaurant (Lovell’s of Lake Forest) and drink wine, like everyone else.

But in an ideal world, I wouldn’t be like everyone else. I’d drink beer for Thanksgiving. (Well, I might have some food along with the beer, too).

And, in an ideal world, I’d have lots of friends and family over for Thanksgiving. Of course, I’d have a turkey, probably a heritage breed, like a Bourbon Red from Caveny Farm in Monticello, IL

And I’d probably get some cranberries from a grower near our summer place in Northern Wisconsin. (Did you know that Wisconsin is the world’s leading producer of cranberries?)

I’d skip the overcooked green beans with canned fried onions, and instead, maybe, serve some braised tat tsoi from Henry’s Farm in Congerville, IL (available Saturday morning 11/19 at the last-gasp of the Evanston Farmers’ Market at Immanuel Lutheran Church, 616 Sherman in Evanston). I’d make it with onion and Nueske’s Bacon.

So, I’m imagining an ideal world.  Obviously, there would be beer.

Lots of beer. Many varieties of beer. Especially local beers.

Turkey can be somewhat on the bland side, but the Caveny birds have much more depth of flavor than your typical supermarket bird. A Great American Beer Festival Gold Medal winning 5 Lizard, from 5 Rabbit Cerveceria (currently brewed on the South Side of Chicago at Argus Brewery, at least until they build their own brewery) would provide the complexity of a Latin twist on a Belgian witbier, to go along with the complexity of the heritage bird.

Cranberries aren’t innately sweet, but their preparations usually involve enough sugar to keep many dentists happily employed, and to finance the yachts that they’ve recently had to put in storage for the season. There are two ways to go with this. You could contrast the sweetness with something truly bitter and hoppy, like Lincoln Avenue’s Half Acre Daisy Cutter or Munster, Indiana’s Three Floyd’s flagship, Alpha King. Or maybe you’d want to complement the sweetness with a Mild Winter From Goose Island. It has rich caramel malt and spicy rye flavors. Tasty.

The tat tsoi, without other additions, would have a subtle, slightly cabbage-y flavor. I’d match that subtlety with a köslch, like Krankshaft, from Metropolitan Brewing. But amped up with onion and bacon, you’d need something a bit more assertive and roasty, like Flossmoor Station’s  Pullman Brown Ale.

For dessert? The obvious choice would be a fruit lambic, from Lindeman’s  – cherry, raspberry, or peach. But a more local choice might be New Glarus’  Belgian Red or Raspberry Tart beers. (New Glarus beers aren’t officially distributed in Chicagoland – you’ll have to cross the cheesehead border to get them. Woodman’s in Kenosha [I-94, exit 344, east] is a good source.)

Or, now for something completely different (apologies to Monty Python), you might try a mead (honey wine) from Chicago’s South Side Wild Blossom Meadery.

It’s amazing how we can easily get so many beer styles brewed locally, and brewed well, in the Midwest.

Maybe it is an ideal world, after all.

It used to be, you could create a craft brewery, and as long as what came out under your label was even slightly better than anything from BudMilCoors, you could be successful (assuming you could navigate the murky waters of distribution and retail or on-premise sales). Other than offering good beer, you didn’t need to differentiate yourself from anyone else out there.

In Chicagoland, we’re lucky now to have a surfeit of breweries. Some of the older guys, like Goose Island and Two Brothers, are still working off the old model – “We’re guys who are gonna make a bunch of different, interesting beers …. whatever we feel like.” And they do make outstanding beers. But do they stand for anything beyond than good beers?

I asked the brewmaster of another well-respected area brewery what his joint stood for. “That’s a good question … I don’t know.”  You could see the puzzlement in his face. “Um, maybe classic beer styles well made?” He was asking me, not telling me. He didn’t know what made the brewery (again, a well-regarded one) special.

The new model, which I’m hoping will be more successful, is a brewery that stands for something identifiable. A brewery with a distinct personality. A niche. A brewery that, when someone asks about it, you can confidently say “Oh, yeah, they make great [easy descriptor here] beers.”

In the Chicagoland area, Three Floyds might have been the first brewery to assert a true personality. The slogan “It’s not normal” aptly describes Three Floyds’ generally over-the-top beers.

Since then, on the opposite end of the flavor spectrum, we’ve had Metropolitan introduce us to locally-made lagers — crisp, clean, and if anything, subtle in their complexity. Pipeworks is coming soon, to answer the burning question “how Belgian can Chicago brewers possibly get?

And that’s why it’s so great to see the emergence of 5 Rabbit Cerveceria. It’s all about a Latino approach to beer … and I’m not talking about that forever skunky Corona in the clear bottles.

Founders Isaac Showaki and Andrés Araya had no real background in actual brewing, although as management consultants based in Mexico City, they worked with a number of big breweries in Central and South America. And they’re smart management consultants. They recognized that craft beer is a fast-growing category. They wanted to be part of it. And they approached it in a very analytical manner — typical for guys with a background in management consulting.

The first question was where to set up shop. “In our countries, there are monopolies or oligopolies that control the distribution channels,” explained Isaac. “Small craft breweries can have a tough time. So we said, okay, let’s try to do it in the US.”

They set up criteria for the location of their cerveceria. “We had to find a city with a decent Latin population. We looked at Los Angeles, Austin TX, Chicago, Miami and New York.” They chose Chicago for its large Hispanic population, with a significant Latino middle class. “Chicago has a big craft beer scene, but it’s not as saturated as some of the cities on the West Coast. It’s also a city with a lot of beer knowledge,” said Isaac, citing Chicago’s internationally respected Siebel Institute of Technology, possibly the world’s leading institution for teaching the art and craft of brewing. “And Chicago has a great culinary scene.”

But there was still that sticking point – they really didn’t have much actual brewing experience. A serendipitous chance encounter changed things.

“We were at the Map Room (corner of Hoyne and Armitage in Chicago), researching Chicago, talking to people,” recalled Isaac, “and the wife of one of our partners started talking to [friend of The Local Beet] Randy Mosher.” Apparently, it was a revelatory discussion. “We had lunch the next day, and right away started on beer designs.”

Randy has long been known for his creativity in beer design, perhaps best embodied in his book Radical Brewing, in which he discusses obscure, orphaned beer styles, as well as beers made with unusual ingredients, like jaggery, quassia, bog myrtle, and sorghum, among many others. (I’m making a “Kentucky Common” beer now, based on his description in the book.)

It was Randy’s idea to make a Latin version of a Belgian witbier, using a bit of passionfruit instead of the common sour orange in the cerveceria’s 5 Lizard beer. And that idea, plus some other recipe tweaking, won a gold medal for 5 Rabbit at the Great American Beer Festival — an almost-unheard-of accomplishment for a brewery that had barely been open for six months. It’s one of the most fascinating beers I’ve had in a long time.

5 Rabbit production is still rather limited — currently, it’s made under contract at Argus Brewery, on the South Side of Chicago. But Isaac and Andrés have plans to build their own brewery within the next year or two. It’s distributed by Glunz, which is known for its impressive collection of specialty beer. So if your local store doesn’t carry any 5 Rabbit products, tell them to have a little, serious talk with their Glunz reps. You’ll be glad you did. And you don’t even need a Hispanic heritage to appreciate their 5 Rabbit, 5 Lizard and 5 Vulture beers. (More special edition beers are coming.)

If you’ve been able to try any of the 5 Rabbit beers, leave a comment and let us know what you thought.