It’s getting pretty damn hot outside and you might be tempted to cool off by reaching for a summer beer staple – the Saison.

But slow your roll.

Take this opportunity to try a lesser known beer style that will remind you of a Saison but offer something a little different.

The Biere de Garde

Biere de Garde is the French cousin of the Belgian Saison. They live just across the border from one another and are both known as farmhouse ales. I like to think they’re friends.

I’ll leave it to The Beer Hunter to fill you in on the rest:

“The name means “beer to keep,” implying that it was laid down as a provision to be drawn upon during the summer. The style belongs to northern France, and bieres de garde often appear in champagne bottles. Traditionally, they were top-fermenting, and some still are. They have a malt accent and an ale-like fruitiness, often with spicy notes, and are medium strong to strong in alcohol.”
- Michael Jackson

Saisons are huge in American craft beer with some breweries only brewing them and nothing else. Biere de Garde – not so much.

There is even a variation of Biere de Garde that is even less common, the Biere de Mars, a seasonal beer brewed in March.

I wanted to give Garde and Mars a shot and also compare them, so I sought out some bottles locally. Fortunately I was able to find an example of each with Lost Abbey’s Avant Garde and New Belgium’s Biere de Mars.

Lost Abbey Avant Garde (Biere de Garde) and New Belgium Biere de Mars

You can see in the picture that they look almost identical. The Mars had some chill haze but after it warmed up it was near impossible to tell them apart.

The aroma is where they parted ways. The Mars had a slightly chalky smell with hints of honey and fruity esters. There was also some funk from the Brett used at bottling. The Avant Garde on the other hand was much more musty. The BJCP describes it as “cellar-like”, which definitely came through. There was also more pilsner malt and tartness.

In the flavor I got more fruit, hay, and sweetness from the Mars. The Garde had a bitter orange peel flavor that stuck out, and well as some spicy flavors. I thought it would be more tilted towards the malt side than it was.

Overall these beers had much more in common than they did different. It’s obvious that they’re in the same family of styles. Hell, with the wide range of Saisons out there, you could even call these Saisons and get away with it.

Picking a winner wasn’t exactly the point, but I enjoyed the Biere de Mars a bit more. Try them both if you get a chance.

Here are some other ones to try:

• Publick House Biere de Mars
• Jolly Pumpkin Oro de Calabaza and Biere de Mars
• Ommegang Biere de Mars

Have you tried any examples of these styles? What did you think?

There’s a very naughty word I like to use.

“Dark fruit”

It comes up repeatedly when I’m describing beer. Like, “I get dark fruit up front…”

In my defense, I’m not alone. A search for the term on Beer Advocate yields over 765,000 results.

What’s the problem with it? It’s a terrible way to describe beer! What does it mean anyways? Plums? Raisins? Overly ripe bananas?

All of these are dark fruits and they taste radically different. The term is too vague.

Exercise the demon

You probably don’t care about this trivial issue, which is good because it means you’re normal.

But I’m doing this BJCP thing and am knee deep in beer tasting. First it was testing for bitterness genes, and now this.

In an effort to become more specific in descibring beer (which I must do in the BJCP exam), I decided to find out what I actually meant when I said “dark fruit.”

What a beer geek eats for dinner

• Plums
• Dates
• Figs
• Raisins
• Prunes

Eating these side by side revealed how flawed the “dark fruit” comment really is. They’re all very different.

I wish I could offer you advice here and tell you how they taste, but I can’t. This is as granular as it gets. A plum tastes like a damn plum. You need to do the work.

What I can tell you is that I’ve tasted all of these flavors in beer, though not to the same degree. The prune and raisin flavors turn up more than the others. I was mainly reminded of Belgian dubbels and quads while eating these.

Also, figs rock.

So I can’t promise that I’ll never say the D.F. phrase again, but the therapy helped. When I feel it creeping up I’ll stop and think of what I’m really tasting and try to be more specific.

Do you suffer from the “dark fruit” demon?

p.s. Thanks to Gary Vaynerchuck and his video for inspiring this effort.

p.p.s. If you try this tasting, you’ll stay regular for weeks. You’re welcome.

It was an ironic situation.

Our BJCP study group was holding one of its bi-weekly meetings. Studying for the exam means refining your tasting abilities. Ideally, you and the other judges are in agreement on what you smell and taste in a beer. The first thing you do after a round of scoring is compare your score to that of your cohorts and hope you’re not too far off.

Yet this particular night, we were about to prove that no matter how hard we studied, mother nature has ensured that we’ll never taste things exactly the same.

Your own pair of genes

Possession of TAS2R38, aka the PTC gene, codes for a bitter taste receptor on the tongue. In beer-drinker language, if you have the tasting form of this gene then you can taste the chemical known as PTC, which tastes bitter.

You can determine whether or not you have the gene by using PTC paper. Depending on the person, the paper is revoltingly bitter, slightly bitter, or tasteless.

I remember doing this experiment in high school biology class. I remember it because the paper was so disgusting. Curious to try again (and possibly torture my friends), I picked up some test strips for my BJCP study group.

The results

Four of us chewed on the paper. Here’s how it turned out:

• Bess:Very bitter
• Chris: Little to no bitterness
• Billy: Very bitter
• Jeremy: Little to no bitterness

PTC party! A bunch of geeks, with the biggest one behind the camera.

But I wasn’t done with my bag of tricks.

I also picked up some thiourea test strips, which are similar to PTC. The interesting thing about this test was that while it was still bitter for Bess and I, Jeremy and Chris found it bitter as well.

Finally we tried the weirdest one, sodium benzoate, which is commonly used as a food preservative. Reactions were all over the place. I found it mostly tasteless but slightly sweet, Bess found it moderately sweet, Jeremy found it salty, and Chris got the distinct essence of hot tub. Go figure.

Something doesn’t add up

Here’s what I find most puzzling about this whole thing. Scientist claim that this is natural selection at work – that if you can taste PTC, then you will avoid potentially toxic plants that taste bitter. In modern-day, PTC-tasters supposedly avoid bitter foods. Here’s a quote I found:

Supertasters will not consume any bitter foods, like dark-green leafy vegetables, coffee or chocolate..

First of all I don’t consider myself a supertaster, but the PTC paper was fucking gross. Seriously.

So why do I love all of those foods and of course, IPAs? Honestly I don’t know. The one thing I can say is that although they’re all bitter, the paper didn’t have one iota of the pleasure as those other foods. I won’t be packing paper strips as a snack any time soon.

Maybe you can acquire the taste for bitterness after all. Maybe the one thing stronger than evolution is India Pale Ale. I’ll buy that.

The internet punches have been flying.

It all started last week when BeerScribe’s Andy Crouch called for the death of beer cocktails and collaboration beers.

Beer cocktail opponents

The beer cocktail debate has actually been going on for quite some time, but Andy certainly fanned the flames:

“In reality, however, beer tends to get lost and overwhelmed as an ingredient in cocktails. The mix of carbonation levels don’t play well together and the small amounts of spirit ingredients, especially those used in smaller measures, often get washed out in the process. The end result is a muddled mess of flavors, often splashing against one another for dominance instead of rowing together in a controlled and directed fashion.”
- Beer Scribe

A number of supporters popped up in the comments. Then came a left hook from a heavyweight. Whether he read Crouch’s piece that day or not (helluva coincidence if not), Charlie Papazian sent this out on Twitter:

But the counter-attacks came sharp and swift.

In the beer cocktail corner

Ezra of The New School beer blog hit back, calling Crouch a big fat idiot (lol…) and condemning his attack on experimentation:

“So you don’t like beer cocktails or brewers teaming up to hash out a new wild experimental collaboration beer. OK, but would you rather go back to a world where your only question was ale or lager? Who knows where we will find the next India Pale Ale if brewers stop experimenting and collaborating.”
- The New School

Then esteemed beer writer Stephen Beaumont tagged himself in and delivered a cold hard dose of logic. He recounts how he responds to people who say “I don’t like beer” when all they’ve tried are mass-produced lagers:

“My response to these self-depriving souls was the same then as it is today. “Beer is a multi-headed beast,” I say, although not necessarily in those exact words, “Just because you don’t like what you have tried thus far needn’t mean that none of it is to your taste.”
- Stephen Beaumont

Plenty of beer cocktail supporters chimed in on social networks and blog comments, outnumbering the vocal naysayers.

Where do I stand?

It’s not hard to figure it out considering I’ve done numerous posts on beer cocktails.

I understand the argument against them. “The brewer worked hard to craft the beer – why ruin their intentions?” And “The beer is at its best on its own”.

But here’s the thing. The people who make these arguments are looking at it the wrong way.

Don’t look at beer cocktails from a beer drinker’s perspective, look at them from a cocktail drinker’s perspective. It changes everything. Instead of thinking, “Why would I dump this beer into a mixed drink”, you ask, “What ingredient could I add to make this a mind-blowing cocktail”? And beer is a damn fine ingredient.

This comment from the BeerScribe post sums up my point:

“I completely agree about beer cocktails. If it’s already a good beer, it’s a rare case that adding liquor or other ingredients is going to improve it.”

It’s not about improving a beer, it’s about making a better cocktail.

If you’re a die-hard purist beer drinker, I understand where you’re coming from. You’ll probably never like beer cocktails. But if you’re like me and you dabble in wine, spirits, and cocktails, then you appreciate the experimentation and new marriages of flavor.

I think much of the venom comes from the fact that most people haven’t had a really good beer cocktail. Hell, most of the ones I’ve written about (e.g. The black velvet) are fun to make but not exactly delicacies.

Maybe I’m spoiled by living in a city that has beer cocktail competitions in that I’ve had some great ones.

I’d be willing to bet that if Andy could try Ryan’s Cherry Bourbon Milk Stout or Justin Colorado Blackberry Whiskey Sour made with La Folie, he would change his tune.

Which corner are you in?

In the beginning of the year I gave you my 12 beer predictions for 2012.

#11 stated that session beers still won’t reach mass popularity in 2012. Well, Lew Bryson is obviously trying to prove me wrong because April 7th is now Session Beer Day.

Despite my prediction, I’m actually thrilled about this. It’s about time light-but-flavorful beers caught on.

So what the hell is Session Beer Day and how do you take advantage of it? If you didn’t participate in the Stout Day last year you might be wondering how these beer days work.

Basically, Session Beer Day is held nation-wide but you’ll want to head to a local bar or brewery who is participating, and hopefully many do. The onus is on them to provide session beers and all you have to do is drink.

Here’s some more help:

How to celebrate

1. Most importantly, drink < 4.5% abv beer on April 7th.
2. Encourage your local bars, restaurants, and breweries to offer session beers.
3. Join The Session Beer Day event on Facebook.
4. Spread the word.

My post on Primer Magazine

Update: Here is a resource page that consolidates a lot of this information and answers questions. Use it.

Ken Weaver and RateBeer put together a huge list of < 4.5% beers grouped by state.

And coincidentally, I recently wrote a post on Primer Magazine called 10 Light Beers that Still Pack a Flavor Punch. So no excuses for not being able to find a beer.

Will you be joining in Session Beer Day? Know what you’re going to drink yet? I’m still waiting to see what the Denver beer scene has in store but I imagine there will be plenty of great choices. Crabtree’s delicious Berliner Weisse comes to mind…

Joshua Bernstein took on an enviable task – to get to the core of the craft brewing movement and expose it to beer lovers.

His book Brewed Awakening (released in November 2011) documents his findings. I’m tempted to write that it appeals most to mid or higher level beers geeks, but it really is a great book for anyone struck by the beer curiosity bug. After all, if you’re interested in reading any book about beer, doesn’t that make you a geek at some level?

Joshua is a fitting author for this book. His tone is youthful and laid back, more suites to the newer generation of beer lovers than say, Michael Jackson’s more academic style. When he mentioned “Natty” in the introduction I knew that he was speaking my language.

The book is organized into themes like barrel aging, hoppy beers, and sours. I was happy to see that newer themes were covered like gluten-free beers, gypsy brewers, and special release events.

If I had to sum up the book in one line it would be “State of the Beer-World”. The craft beer world is overwhelming. There now around 2,000 craft breweries in the U.S. and some are pumping out more than two dozen unique brews. How the hell are you supposed to keep up?

Let’s face it – a lot of them simply don’t matter. That sounds harsh but what I mean is that there are hundreds of run of the mill pale ales and wheat beers out there. They aren’t extraordinary in flavor nor do they have significant meaning in brewing history.

Then there are those that have significance. They are the beers that we’ll look back on in 20 years and say, “That was a game changer.” That’s what I like most about Brewed Awakening. Josh separates the wheat from the chaff and says to the reader, “This beer is important. Drink it.”

The way he does it is like this – he discusses a topic, say session beers, and then highlights “5 To Try” at the end of the chapter. It’s unique way to do it since we’re used to seeing beers organized by style, and with this method you’ll find both lambics and barleywines in the “Beers to Cellar” section. You might like it, you might not.

“When people take my homebrew tour, the main attraction is the beer. Yet an equally important, if less acknowledged, lure is the voyeuristic thrill of entering a stranger’s home. There’s their toothbrush, their laundry basket, their cigarette-stained couch. Initially, attendees are awkward – until the second or third beer. Then the homey setting creates the kind of casual intimacy I wish existed at every bar. Strangers talk. Relationships bloom. It’s like a roving house party, which is a lovely thing.”

- Joshua Bernstein discussing his homebrew tours

The International Spotlight sections scattered throughout the book takes you on brief trips to breweries outside the U.S. . You learn that the craft beer craze is going strong in places like Mexico, Scotland, and Canada. I wrote a few beers down on my wish list if I am ever able to get my hands on them.

Overall this book is a great addition to your beer library and I recommend you pick up a copy. It’s a fun, easy read with nice graphics to boot (that matters to me). I hope Joshua writes another “State of the Beer-World” in 5-10 years and takes me along for the adventure.

What do you think you would turn up in Google if you searched “iPhone App Developer” 6 years ago?

Nothing.

The same thing would happen if you looked up “Wii accessories” before 2006.

My point is that with the rise of a new product or industry, there are always beneficiaries outside of the primary ones. When it comes to who benefits from craft beer, you think of the main players – breweries, distributors, beer retailers, and consumers.

But there is another type of business that’s been riding on the coattails of popular brands for years – merchandisers. And although beer merchandise has been around almost as long as commercially produced beer, there’s a noticeable shift going on in what that merchandise looks like thanks to craft beer.

A new basket of goods

What comes to mind when you think of Big Beer merchandise?

For me it’s neon signs, Bud frog t-shirts, and koozies.

It usually appeals to the party crowd or sports fans. That’s not a big surprise since those are common areas for Big Beer marketing bucks. White sandy beaches, tailgates, and back yard BBQs are what these brands try to associate themselves with.

Craft beer merchandise, on the other hand, takes on a different theme. The craft and artistry that goes into craft brewing is reflected in these products. There are dozens of craft beer themed shops on Etsy making everything from beer bottle candles to wallets constructed from old 6-packs.

You see much more food products too, which makes sense because craft beer is much more food friendly compared to macro lagers. How much flavor could Coors Light add to a hot sauce?

Sure there is some overlap. There are t-shirts for Big Beer and there are t-shirts for craft beer. Same goes for branded pint glasses and bottle openers. But overall there’s a shift in the type and quantity of merchandise available for craft beer. Indie breweries have given rise to indie beer products.

I for one think it’s a good thing. When you love a beer or brewery you can show it in ways outside of just drinking the beer. With this new wave of merchandise the possibilities are endless.

Infographic time!

You guys know my skill (not really) with infograhics so I made another. Enjoy, and let me know in the comments what you think about these craft beer products. Do you like them, or do you prefer your Old Milwaukee can-hat?

Linkage: Beer Gear by Mindy, Oskar Blues Hot Sauce, Stone candle

It’s been a while since I’ve talked about my keezer build, so I thought I’d give everyone an update.

I had a feeling that the video would help people out, but I didn’t expect it to get over 11k views and inspire so many people to do similar builds. Cool!

Where I last left off, I made the collar and had two out of the four taps hooked up, with caps in the other two holes.

I invite you to check out my keezer photo album on facebook where I just added new pictures.

Since the last post, I’ve:

• Switched from using a “tee” on the CO2 to having four gas lines running through the manifold
• Added the final two Perlick faucets
• Added a new 3 gallon and 5 gallon corny
• Added a mini-dehumidifier
• Added a fan

The fan is what I mainly want to talk about.

The problem was that the top of the keezer was much warmer than the bottom because of the collar. The collar doesn’t have any cooling coils running through it, and we know cold air sinks, so that area stayed a good 14°F warmer than the bottom.

That meant the lines were warm and that first pour was always a warm and foamy one. No good.

The fan is used to circulate the air. It doesn’t have to be very strong, it just needs to get things moving.

After installing the fan, the temperature different between the top and the bottom went from 14°F to 3°F. Not bad.

Here’s how I built it.

Adding a fan to a keezer

The goal was to attach the fan to the collar and have it pointing down instead of sideways so it would push the warm air down and the cold air up.

At first I was stumped. I looked all over at other setups but couldn’t find exactly what I wanted. A lot of people attached the fan to the inside lid of of the freezer, but I haven’t damaged the freezer one bit yet and don’t plan to. That’s the whole reason I built the collar. It’s a tool belt.

Finally I decided on what you see below.

The fan is attached to hinges via machine screws. The hinges rest on a small wooden shelf.

The shelf is just a scrap piece of plywood attached to the collar with a corner brace.

These are the parts I used:

• 3″ AC cooling fan from Radio Shack
• Extension cord
• 1 2-inch corner brace. The exact ones I bought aren’t on Ace’s site.
• 2 3-inch strap hinges
• Scrap piece of plywood I had lying around
• Two machine screws, washers, and nuts. Not sure the size but I fitted them to the fan at Ace.

Building it is pretty simple and you can probably figure it out from the picture, but a few notes:

• The wood screws went all the way through the plywood so I cut the tips off with a Dremel.
• I cut the female end off the extension cord and attached it to the wire leads from the fan using wire connectors.
• To be safe, I plugged the fan into a GFCI adapter.
• I spray painted the hinges and brace the same color and stained the plywood with the leftover stain from the collar so they match. It’s a big improvement as you can see from the pictures on facebook.

Like I said, it works great and although I’ll continue to tinker, I’m happy to call my keezer complete.

If you’re wondering about the drip tray, I decided not to add one. I have an old one I keep on the floor below the taps, but honestly the Perlicks drip so little that I don’t even need it.

Another useful addition was the dehumidifier. I tried Damp-Rid first and this works much better.

If there are any significant changes in the future then I’ll do another post, but otherwise, let me know if you have any questions. If you’re ever in Denver, swing by and grab a pint!

I’ve never reviewed a beer on this blog.

Strange, huh?

Sure I’ve talked about different beers and what I thought about them, but I’ve never done what you would call a “review post”.

There’s no secret strategy behind it. I really just don’t think I have much to add beyond the hundreds of sites that do beer reviews. Plus I only post once a week, so when I do post I want it to be something a little different.

No I’m not going to give in here and do a review, but I do want to do something cool along those lines.

The Types of Beer Reviews

I read beer reviews often and am fascinated by the all of the different ways there are to do the same thing – describe beer. Not everyone likes reading beer reviews. I myself get tired of them, and let’s face it, some are just not fun to read.

But maybe you just haven’t read (or watched) the right type.

Here are 10 different beer review formats that I dug up from across the web. See if any of them really click with you.

1. The collaborative
2. The video review
3. The super short video
4. The expletive-laden
5. The poetic
6. The innovative
7. The experiential
8. The BJCP
9. The wine drinker’s beer review
10. The wordless

Are there any of these you really enjoy above the rest?

Starting a brewery is unique experience. If you’ve never been involved in it yourself, it’s hard to appreciate what goes into it.

Nick Nunns of TRVE Brewing gives us a look behind the scenes in this video. TRVE is opening Denver in the Spring of 2012 in the up and coming Baker neighborhood.

Construction at TRVE before opening

This is the first video in a series we are planning on. We’ll follow Nick from before the brewery opens, to shortly after, to a year or so down the line. It will be cool to see the progression.

Let me know if you’re into this, and if you have any questions or comments for Nick, leave them below.