Whenever we serve a Belgian-style beer at Venture Cafe, I very helpfully use the term “Belgiany” to respond to inquires regarding the taste of the offering.  While my descriptor is often met with skeptical (or annoyed) expressions, invariably guests will smile after that first sip, cock their heads to the side with a purse of the lips, and agree, “Yeah, that is Belgiany.”

This oft-repeated exchange raises the question: what makes a Belgian beer Belgiany?  It’s a tough question, because there are so many types of Belgian beer, and no one style in which Belgian beer is brewed. Compared to their peers, Belgian beers tend to have higher alcohol content, and are more often bottle-conditioned, or re-fermented in the bottle, which results in an almost champagne-like effervescence when the beer is poured.  However, these characteristics are not what create that signature “Belgiany” taste.

The credit for the unique taste of Belgian beers goes to the wild card of beer ingredients: the yeast.  Yeast are the micro-organisms that transform sugar (the malt) into alcohol and carbon dioxide.  They also create phenols and esters, chemical compounds that produce the flavors and aromas that contribute to the character of a beer.  While yeasts for some beer styles, like lagers, are cultivated to reduce these phenol and ester by-products, ale yeasts are often selected for their characteristic output.  Esters commonly have a fruity aroma (like berry, banana, or orange), while phenols produce more spicy elements (like pepper, cloves, or herbs).  Brewers choose specific strains of yeast for their aroma and flavor offerings, and even highlight them by raising fermentation temperatures.  One popular strain of yeast for Belgian brewers is called Brettanomyces bruxellensis, which may lend hints of fruitiness, spiciness, or earthiness to a beer depending on conditions.

To understand this particular quality in beer, try some Allagash White this week at the Cafe.  It’s a wheat beer, spiced with orange and coriander, with a refreshing finish … but if you ask, I will just tell you that it’s “Belgiany.”

On tap at Venture Café is the delicious Blue Hills 3 Peak Holiday Stout.  Brewed in the milk stout style, it boasts strong flavors of vanilla, oak, and sweet lactose.  A few months ago, we served Opa Opa Milk Stout, which tasted of roasted malts, coffee, and chocolate.  Whenever the Café pours a milk stout,  the most common question at the bar is: “Hey – got any milk in that stout?”

It turns out that the “milk stout” style is a modern day misnomer.  Drinkers in the UK in the 1800s did indeed pour whole milk into their porters and stouts, and brewers at the time added milk to their fermentation processes.  However, the modern recipe does not call for milk, but instead requires lactose sugar, which is the sugar that is found in milk and gives it that creamy texture and taste.

Lactose sugar differs from other sugars in how it is affected by yeast.  In normal “non-milk” brewing, the yeast ferments most of the sugar in the brew into alcohol.  The leftover sugar that the yeast does not process imparts a sweet flavor to the beer, so brewmasters control this fermentation process to manage the sweetness of the final product.  Unlike other sugars, however, lactose sugar cannot be fermented by the yeast, so it all remains in the beer to create a fuller-bodied product with more rounded mouthfeel and added sweetness.  It also can balance the hoppiness and bitterness of some drier stouts.

These qualities make the milk stout an excellent introduction to darker beer styles – a gateway stout, if you will.  So, the next time you get the chance, try a milk stout.  I hear it does a body good.

A fellow participant at the American Craft Beer Fest asked me about the difference between styles of Trappist beers, particularly dubbels, tripels and quads.  I did know that what these beers have in common is that they are all ales, meaning that they are top-fermenting, and bottle-conditioned.  Beyond a vague notion of “strength,” I did not know the exact difference between the three, so I thought it would be helpful to do a little research for the blog.

I found that the different styles have their origin in the amount of malts added to the beer: twice the amount demanded from the basic recipe for a duppel, three times for the tripel and four times for the quad.  However, that characterization is no longer accurate in brewing these beers today; they are now distinguished by alcohol content and to a lesser extent by color.

I will start with the Enkel, which means “single.”  The Enkel was the lightest beer produced in the monastery and consumed by the monks themselves.  Today these beers are rarely offered for public sale, and the term Enkel is used more often to describe the basic recipe for a Trappist brewer.

Dubbels are relatively strong beers, with about 6-8% ABV.  They are considered brown ales, with slight bitterness, fairly heavy body, and balanced roast and dark fruit flavors.  Dubbels have a very small hop profile but a pronounced dry malt character.  Examples include Westmalle Dubbel, Chimay Red/Premiere, and Rochefort 8.

Tripels are cleaner and crispier than the other styles, with 7-10% ABV, but they tend to be more pale or blonde in color.  The aroma and flavor tend to involve powdery yeast and fruit notes with a sweet finish.  Tripels are on the complex side for a light-bodied beer, and involve a fair amount of hops and bitterness, spice, malt and fruit flavors.  Westmalle Tripel and Chimay White/Cinq Cents are two examples of Tripel beers.

Quads are similar to dubbels, but the alcohol is the most important part of flavor profile, giving quads a sweeter quality than dubbels.  Quads sit at 9%+ ABV, and range from amber to dark brown in color.  Quads are full bodied, allowing for a rich malty palate with low bitterness and pronounced fruit flavors.  Some examples include St. Bernadus Abt 12, Three Philosophers, and Pretty Things Baby Tree.

I have given you the basics.  However, the best way to discern the difference between these beers is to taste them, and to feel the difference in their effects.  So treat yourself to a taste test, and decide which one is your new favourite beer.

Many Venture Cafe guests have inquired at the bar as to how we choose the beers on tap and how we procure them.  It’s not always a straight-forward process, so I thought I’d enlighten guests on the byzantine world of craft beer keg retail.

In order to choose beers, we need to know first what our options are.  Thus, we pursue many avenues of education so that we learn about local breweries and what they are producing.  For example, the Craft Beer Fest – coming up soon the weekend of June 3 – has in the past introduced us to new breweries and brews.  Additionally, Beer Advocate, the magazine and the website, produces helpful articles and lists identifying what’s good and what’s new.  The website includes member ratings on beers that may influence us as to whether to buy a keg and what size to buy.  The local breweries themselves also have websites that keep us updated on their seasonal beers and events going on locally.  Finally, some local bars boast wonderful beer menus and are a great place to sample beers.  These include but are not limited to Bukowski’s, Sunset Grill and Tap, Publick House, Lord Hobo, MeadHall and the Lower Depths.  It’s a tough job to romp around Boston sampling beer, but it’s all in the name of research for the public good.

Once we know what’s out there, we can make the selection for the week.  In selecting beers, we try to balance a few factors.  We consider which state the beer is from, which brewery makes it, its alcohol content, and whether it is light or dark.  Variety is key and the goal is to ensure there is a beer for everyone’s taste, and to support the local breweries. Before I make my requests for the week, I check with the Massachusetts Beverage Business catalogue to see whether the beer I want is available in a keg size that will fit in our bar, and whether the beer is distributed by a company that works with our retailer, Downtown Wine and Spirits in Somerville.

The next step is to talk to our friends at Downtown.  They have been quite patient with my beer whims and are kind enough to deliver our kegs every week.  Downtown also knows its beer – knows it well – and always has good recommendations when I am at a loss.  Ordering from them often requires negotiation, however, because sometimes the local brewery is not producing what we want, or is temporarily out of the keg size we want, or forgets to send the beer to Downtown.  So, Downtown has to do a lot of talking with the distributors and breweries, and I have to do a lot of talking with Downtown about what backup beers would work if the ones we want are unavailable.  In the end, I get to learn a lot about different beers and channels of distribution, and Downtown gets the experience of working with a very unique client.  Obviously, I get the good end of the deal!

Downtown then delivers the beer on Thursday before the cafe, and picks up the empty kegs from the previous week to be reused.  Each tap has a line-up of kegs planned for it, so we arrange the kegs in the bar so that they will be easy to move around to tap and untap.

Finally, the kegs are tapped, and the beer flows into your cup.

It’s as simple as that.

-Gregg Berman, Founder of Clown Shoes

The founders of Clown Shoes originally submitted the name to a Beer Advocate contest to name a new brew in celebration of the 2010 Extreme Beer Fest.  After the submission didn’t crack the top 5 finalists, the wound festered until the founders realized that they could make their own Clown Shoes beer.  Thus inspired, they made one batch of beer, and when people liked it, they continued with their new brand, brewing from Ipswich, Massachusetts.  To Gregg Berman, Founder of Clown Shoes, the name reminds him “about humility and to find humor in life.”  He says that the brewery’s mission is to “produce beer without pretension while being free and a little crazy.”  In the cafe, we recently poured Tramp Stamp IPA, and coming this week are Clementine and Hoppy Feet.

The Clown Shoes website explains that like its namesake, Tramp Stamp IPA is “about not so subtle seduction.”  The beer pours a cloudy auburn color and smells of a wheat beer, with wafts of grassy hops and a little sweetness.  The taste follows with cloves, banana and yeast notes, along with hops, grass, and citrus bitters.  These characteristics put the beer firmly on the “Belgian” side of the Belgian-American spectrum of IPAs.

Clementine also follows the Belgian style, but as a white ale.  It pours a hazy yellowish color, and smells of ripe banana and orange zest, with a very faint hint of hops.  To the tongue, the malt taste comes through first, along with a good dose of wheat twang and just a hint of grain. Afterwards comes a flavour of coriander and strong orange peel.  The finish involves more orange and a hint of grapefruit from bitter American hops.

Hoppy Feet, of course, is all about the hops.  It combines Premium malt with Amarillo and Columbus hops.  The beer pours black, with a 2-finger brown head that leaves nice foamy lacing on the glass.  The smell is quite delicious, with roasted, chocolately malt and citrus American hops, with a strong grapefruit kick.  Hoppy Feet tastes of burnt coffee and bitter hops, with a hint of citrus, feeling very smooth to the mouth.

Now that you know about some of the beers, feel free to stop by the cafe to try them out… as long as you are feeling unpretentious, free and a little crazy.

At Venture Cafe, we take pride in serving local craft beers.  After repeating the phrase “local craft beers” many, many times, I realized that a lot of people had no idea what the phrase meant.  In our case, local may be in the eye of the beholder, but “Craft Beer” is actually a term of art and has a specific, though changing, meaning.

A craft brewery, according to the Brewers’ Association website, is small, independent, and traditional.

• Small means that the brewery produces 6 million barrels or fewer (the website uses the term less, but that is incorrect).  This 6 million figure is new and triples the previous 2 million cap that was set in 1976.  While new resources and technology make it reasonable to increase the cap, this change happens to coincide with the Boston Beer Company’s approach to the 2 million barrel mark.  Boston Beer Company is the largest craft beer producer in the US, with Sierra Nevada trailing at just under 800,000 barrels.
• Independent means that less than 25% of the brewery is owned or controlled by an alcoholic beverage industry member that is not itself a craft brewer.
• Traditional means that the brewer’s flagship beer is made from all malts, or has at least 50% of its volume in either all malt beers, or in beers which use unmalted grains (adjuncts) to enhance rather than lighten the flavour of the beverage.

Craft brewers have distinctive characteristics.  While they use traditional ingredients like malted grains, they have a reputation for being innovative and for interpreting historical styles with a new twist.  Craft brewers also tend to be involved in their local communities through donations, philanthropy and volunteering.  Many of these small breweries have a loyal following and maintain distinctive strategies to attract and maintain customers.

American Craft Beer week is next month, May 16 – 22, and the American Craft Beer Fest will be in Boston in early June.  These and other events have raised awareness of these unique breweries and hopefully will go a long way to keep these small businesses producing the beer we’ve grown to love.

Judging from the snow that fell on March 21, spring has not yet arrived outside … but it has arrived in Venture Cafe.  Local breweries are releasing their spring seasonal beers and we are trying to catch them before they run out of hops (pun(s) intended).

This week you have the opportunity to taste the Mayflower Spring Hop beer.  Mayflower Brewery is located in Plymouth MA and this is its very first spring seasonal brew!  Spring Hop is a hoppy red ale with a strong aroma, created by four varieties of American aroma hops.  It pours a dark copper, amber color with a dense foam on top that retreats into a bubbled lace pattern on the glass as you drink.  Putting the glass to your nose, the brew smells fresh, with a notion of citrus hitting first, followed by grassy and floral hops, and then a bit of malt sweetness.  The taste follows the smell, although it’s more balanced with the hop bitterness and caramel malt sweetness followed by a more citrusy note at the end.  The beer is smooth with medium body and carbonation.  All in all, the beer is fresh and makes for very easy drinking.

Also joining us in the cafe is Berkshire Brewing Company’s Maibock Lager, released each year to celebrate the return of spring.  This Maibock Lager is made with Noble hops and its richness lies in its simultaneously sweet and spicy malt flavour.  The lager pours a classic pale amber maibock color, with a healthy dose of fine white foam on top.  To the nose, the beer hints at malt sweetness, toasty grain, and fruit.  To the tongue, the Maibock Lager introduces a light hop flavour, with hints of fruit and spice, finished off with soft bitterness and a warm alcohol taste.  The beer is medium to full bodied, with average carbonation.  This beer is a balanced but full-flavored beer.

Spring beers are a great remedy for the winter blues.  So come (too embarrassed to write “hop”) on over to Venture Cafe to lift your spirits!

I’ve run into a few people recently who are starting their own beer cellars.  To be honest, the idea is a bit intimidating to me, because “beer cellaring” sounds fancy and complicated to my ears.  After a bit of research, however, I found that it’s not so hard, and even a bit of an adventure.  If you have some patience and enjoy a little experimentation, you might give it a try!  Below I’ve outlined the basics to get you started.

Why store beer:

Beer enthusiasts store beer because they are curious and like to experiment, and probably have a preference for the flavors that come out after storage.  A lot of what happens during storage comes from esters in the beer. Esters are a by-product of ale yeast fermentation (lagers do not have esters).  As the beer sits in your cellar, esters break down, with help from yeasts, and their flavors begin to dissipate.  Hop flavors also tend to break down quickly.  As a result of these and other reactions that occur in the bottle, aged beer tends to be smoother and creamier in comparison to beer that has not been stored. Common flavors in cellared beer include chocolate, coffee, toffee and spice.

What to store: Most beers have a shelf life of three to six months, so only certain types of beers benefit from maturation – those that can be set aside for at least a year or two to develop complexities in aroma, flavor and mouthfeel.  Beers that have higher than 8% alcohol content tend to benefit most from storage  These beers include old ales, Belgian strong beers, lambics, imperial stouts, barleywines, and maybe even a big IPA.  When you go to the store, buy two of your chosen brew, because you will want to compare its characteristics before and after storage.

Where to store:

The best place to store beer is a cool, dark place.  A basement is a good option.  A refrigerator could work, but might provide an environment too dry for some beer corks – so be sure to check on humidity conditions.

Step one: Block sunlight. Glass bottles allow UV rays to come into contact with the beer, causing chemicals called isohumulones – which make beer bitter – to decompose and form compounds found in skunks’ spray. This is why beer exposed to light is called “skunked beer.”

Step two: Make sure the temperature is stable, ideally between 50-55 degrees Fahrenheit.  Colder temperatures will produce a hazy appearance and kill carbonation, flavor and aroma, while warmer temperatures shorten the lifespan of the beer.  Avoid temperature fluctuations of greater than 20 degrees.  A good rule of thumb is that beers with higher alcohol content can withstand higher temperatures while beers with lower alcohol content can be stored at lower temperatures.

Step three: Keep track of humidity.  Too little humidity will dry out the cork (more on that below), and too much humidity will produce black mold in your stored bottle.  You can use an air purifier along with a humidifier or de-humidifier depending on where you live to keep the humidity between 50-70 percent.

How to store:

Aficionados argue whether beer should be stored upright, or on its side like wine.  If stored upright, it is argued, the sediment in the beer bottle will settle to the bottom, but the cork will dry out.  Dry corks are bad because they tend to be looser in the neck and allow more air to be exchanged between the bottle and the outside climate; plus no one likes it when a cork crumbles to pieces into their beverage.  Beer stored on its side, however, could form a yeast ring in the bottle that will not settle, and constant contact with the cork can impart cork flavors on the beer.  Check out Beer Advocate for an article supporting upright storage.

When to liberate beer from storage:

There is no set time for beer storage.  Most say that beers may be stored anywhere from a couple of years to 10 years, but may deteriorate after 5 years.  Experimentation is part of the fun, so you can become the expert in the types of beers that you like.

For more information, check out:

http://lovegoodbeer.com/2009/01/the-beer-cellar-how-to-cellar-beer-and-why/

http://www.imbibemagazine.com/Cellaring-Beer

http://beeradvocate.com/beer/101/store

Last week, many of you commented positively on the Ipswich Original Ale, which was on tap at Venture Cafe for the first time.  Ipswich is a “North Shore Classic” so obviously it finds favour with the locals.  In fact, after 56 pours, the keg is almost empty so get to Venture Cafe early on Thursday if you want to catch it before it runs out!

Ipswich was originally brewed by Ipswich Brewing Company, until Rob Martin – Ipswich’s Director of Operations – bought the brewery and expanded it to become Mercury Brewing and Distribution Company.  He continued production of Ipswich Ale, but added Stone Cat Ales and Lagers, Mercury Premium Sodas, and a few contract brewing agreements to Mercury’s empire. They are @IpswitchAleBrew on the Twitters.

For those of you who missed Ipswich Original Ale, Ipswich Ale is “a medium-bodied, unfiltered English style pale ale with subtle hoppiness and a smooth malty flavour,” according to Mercury.  It pours a hazy amber/chestnut color with some head that disappears quickly.  The aroma is very bready, with wafts of floral hops and caramel malts.  Ispwich’s taste starts a bit sweet with those caramel malts, but then the taste turns towards the bready side before the big and slightly bitter hop finish.  All in all, the flavour is well-balanced, and the beer offers easy drinkability with a silky mouth-feel.

This brew is definitely worth a taste – so try it out, whether you find yourself on the North Shore or in Venture Cafe!

Prior to a recent business trip to London, I asked a friend for recommendations of British beers to sample.  He mentioned a few different names, and then advised me against cask ales, unless I enjoyed “warm, yeasty beers.”  Ever curious, I did sample a few cask ales on that trip, and enjoyed them enough to investigate further.

Cask ale, also called “Real Ale,” is an unfiltered and unpasteurised beer.  Cask ale starts off the same as any other beer, with traditional ingredients and a primary fermentation.  It is different from other beer because it undergoes a secondary fermentation conditioning and is served from a cask without additional nitrogen or carbon dioxide pressure.

After the primary fermentation, instead of being filtered or pasteurised, a cask ale is poured into the cask in its natural state, leaving behind most of the yeast except a small amount which is carried over in suspension to continue its work in the cask.  Finings – substances like egg white or milk – are added to the cask to drop the yeast and clarify the beer.  Additionally, priming sugars (for enhanced fermentation) or extra dry hops (for flavour) might be added to the brew.  Then, the beer “conditions” for some amount of time: shorter periods of days to weeks for lighter beers, longer periods like months for stronger beers.

After arrival at a pub, a cask must be left alone to clarify for 24-48 hours at temperature of 55-55 degrees.  Once the beer is settled, a soft spile is knocked into the shive (a small hole) in the cask.  A spile is a wooden peg that allows carbon dioxide to escape while controlling flow of air into the cask.  Once the bubbling around the spile, which indicates escaped carbon dioxide, has subsided, the soft spile is replaced by a hard one that does not allow air exchange, and the cask is allowed to settle once again.  This work with the spiles requires some skill to bring the beer to an appropriate level of carbonation.

Later, the pub will tap the cask.  The beer must be siphoned from the cellar by means of a “beer engine” or hand pump.  The pump is an airtight piston chamber; when the bartender pulls down on the handle, it raises the piston which drags up the beer.

Brewing cask ale can be a delicate process that is very sensitive to temperature changes and handling.  However, I found that cask ale offers a distinctive, well-rounded taste – particularly in the winter months.  Additionally, cask ale is fresh, natural and local, making it one of the more friendly beers to sample.