Newly reinstated in snowy Boston after a week in Paris, and avoiding stepping into the outside tundra, I decided now would be the perfect time to investigate French beer from the comfort of my couch.  I realize that France is better known for its other alcoholic beverages, but thought that it must boast some beer talent, with its close proximity to beer powerhouses like Germany and Belgium.

My hypothesis proved correct, and conveniently one type of beer is more influenced by German brewing while the other borrows from Belgian traditions.  These two major types of beer in France are bière d’Alsace and bière de garde.

Bière d’Alsace, not surprisingly, comes from the Alsace region of France (that would be northeastern France for those geographically challenged) right along that German border.  Most French beer is produced in Alsace, including Fischer and Kronenbourg.  These beers are mostly pale with some pilsner characteristics.  I tried Kronenbourg at a lovely sidewalk café one afternoon.  It poured a golden yellow with respectable lacing and smelled sweetly grainy and a bit hoppy.  It felt crisp and light in my mouth, and the taste revealed a nice balance of malts and hops, with some grassy notes.  I would describe it as a traditional European pale lager.

Perhaps more interesting and certainly more complex is the bière de Garde (in English, “keeping beer”), which originates from French Flanders, Picardy and the Pas de Calais in northern France.  Bière de garde was traditionally brewed from February to March and enjoyed during the summer.  This copper- to golden-coloured brew’s main characteristics are its malt accent and ale-like fruitiness, but it also has earthy and caramel notes.  The beer is spicy and strong enough to be passed off as a Belgian ale.  One very tasty bière de garde that I have sampled is called 3 Monts from the Brasserie De Saint-Sylvestre.  It comes corked and pours a bright straw color and is very clear.  It smells of yeast – earthy and spicy – and tastes of hoppy bitterness.  The taste is also earthy and maybe a little nutty, with notes of cinnamon, clove and white pepper.  This beer is very drinkable – dangerous with the high alcohol content – even though the high carbonation will make your mouth “fizzle”.

Next time you dine at a French bistro or brasserie, whether in Europe or in the Boston tundra, why not forego the predictable wine selection and investigate whether the restaurant offers these tasty beers?  You might be surprised by how well they pair with the French food!  Salut!

When it started to get cold back in November, and we were past the time appropriate for “oktoberfests,” I decided it was time to get some “winter beers” into the café.  The problem was that I didn’t really know what a “winter beer” was.  It turned out that no one really knew what defined a winter beer – although the most common characteristics include malty taste, complexity and high alcohol content.  In addition to these characteristics, some winter beers have strong fruity or spicy overtones.  Others are flavored with vanilla or chocolate.  In short, these beers tend to make one feel “cozier.”

So far, we’ve served Brooklyn Winter Ale, Wachusett Winter Ale, and Peak Organic Winter Session Ale.  Brooklyn Winter (@brooklynbrewery) is a smooth and creamy Scottish ale that hits somewhat malty and bready on the nose, and pours a clear bright amber with a small head. It has a reasonable mixture of hops to balance the sweet malty flavor. Other flavors include chocolate and caramel as well as hints of butterscotch.

Wachusett Winter (@wachusettbrew) pours a nice amber color with a white foamy head.  Wachusett Winter is also a Scottish ale, made with crystal, Munich, smoked and special malts.  The beer has a ruby color and a malty aroma.  The malts come out in the taste as well, with notes of caramel, roasted nuts and a light fruitiness.  Wachusett Brewery asserts that no spices are needed for this rich flavored brew!

Peak Organic Winter Session Ale (@peakbrewing) is a winter wheat beer that uses dark malting to produce subtle toasty flavors.  Peak Organic single-hops the beer but then also dry-hops the beer with Citra hops from a friend’s farm.  The Citra hops give the beer pineapple overtones that contrast with the toastiness of the flavor.  Winter Session pours a darkened amber color, but the brew is very clear.  The aroma contains wheat, citrus, bananas, dark malts and a good amount of hops.  The taste begins crisp and hoppy, and then rounds out with dark roasted malts and hints of caramel and roasted malts.  Thus the beginning sweetness becomes moderately bitter in the finish.

We’ll be trying out more “winter beers” in the café over the coming winter months.  What’s your winter preference?  Are you a Scottish Ale type?  A dark wheat connoisseur?  Or do you like it spicy?  Come to the café and find out!

Your friendly bartender,

Amy

For something a little different this week, I decided to go with Black Hops.  Blue Hills Brewery has created a hybrid lager-ale, based on the German Schwarzbier.  The brewery uses hops as the bittering agent rather than roasted malts used in related darker style beers like stouts and porters.   Black Hops is a hybrid because Blue Hills uses its house ale yeast to obtain full flavour, but once fermented, the ale  is “lagered” or cold-stored.  This lagering tones down the aroma produced in top fermentation.

The beer pours dark brown in color with some reddish hues, and a cream-colored head.  Before you taste the beer, note its malty and roasty aroma with hints of coffee and toffee.  The toffee and coffee come out fully in the flavour, accompanied by citrusy hops, finishing in a dry mild bitterness.  Blue Hills promises that Black Hops will delight the ale or lager customer alike, and it did receive positive critical acclaim at its Venture Cafe debut last night!  Come try it next week.

Your friendly bartender,

Amy

This Thanksgiving, try to be a bit more like the Pilgrims: not in the pushing Native Americans further from their own territory way, but in the drinking beer at Thanksgiving dinner way. Just like wine, beer comes in diverse varieties that can pair well with different stages of your meal. Also, remember that Mayflower Thanksgiving Ale – an American Strong Ale we poured in the café last week – will by virtue of its name be appropriate for any stage of the meal!

When your guests first arrive, pour them something crisp, cold and light. You don’t want to fill them up, but you do want to get them excited for the upcoming delicious meal. Something in the lager family, or a wheat beer, will do the trick. Otter Creek Vermont Lager or a simple Sam Adams Boston Lager are great local choices, and a Brooklyn Lager or Pilsner would be local enough. If you want to strive for something a bit more exotic, hand your guests a Singha Lager, a Duvel or a Schneider Weisse German Hefe-Weizen Ale, or break out your champagne flutes for a nice tart Goose Island Sofie.

When you serve those tempting hors d-oeuvres, fetch some beers that kick it up a notch. Go for a more colorful lager, for example a Yeungling Amber or Sam Adams Black. Alternatively, step it up with hops from a pale ale, like Sierra Nevada or Anchor Liberty, or keep it local with Smuttynose. These beers will pair nicely with most salads and cheeses.

Be prepared with some richer beers for your main course. You’ll need some bigger, hoppier and more alcoholic beers to stand up to all those flavors in your meal! Strong Belgian Ales make an especially fitting pairing for a Thanksgiving dinner. Goose Island’s Matilda, Ommegang Brewery Rare Vos Belgian-Style Amber Ale, Allagash Grand Cru, and Avery Salvation all have the higher alcohol content that will cut through all that fat, and cleanse the palate with just a touch of sweetness.

If you need a break between the turkey and desserts, turn to something softer and sweeter. Barleywines are perfect for this purpose. Turn on the game, bring out your snifters and pour some Dogfish Head Raison d’Extra Ale or a Stone Old Guardian Barley Wine Style Ale.

Once your stomach is settled for dessert, find your sweet beers in the back of your fridge. You want your beer to be sweeter than the dessert. Dogfish Head Pumpkin Ale pairs well with pecan or pumpkin pies. A big chocolate stout, dark with coffee and cocoa tones, will go down well with sugary pecan pies. For example, try a Rogue Chocolate Stout, a Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout, or a Stone Russian Imperial Stout.

By this time, the Thanksgiving crowd should be ready for good walk. Put away the food and alcohol, turn off the game, leash up the dog and step outside. Walk long enough so that when you return, you will be ready for all those leftovers, food and beer alike. Enjoy the holiday!

Beer Advocate is a great resource for beer pairings for thanksgiving dinner, as is Beer Utopia.

-Amy, your friendly beer wench

If you are what you drink, many Venture Cafers became High and Mighty this week. Kicked quite resoundingly at Saturday’s MIT Sloan International MBA Sales Competition, the High and Mighty “Beer of the Gods” created a lot of intrigue and many happy taste buds. With a name like “Beer of the Gods,” one might expect a satisfactorily “large” beer, but this brew is light, refreshing and very drinkable. When you think of all the important things Gods have to do – create wisdom, make war, encourage agriculture, hurl bolts of lightning – it makes sense that they’d want to keep it light. At 4.5% alcohol, Beer of the Gods is a German-style beer with a sensible dose of hoppiness.

Beer of the Gods was born in 2006 at the Paper City Brewery in Holyoke MA. Will Shelton, the brewer, still brews his High and Mighty beers at Paper City but has plans to open an independent space soon. Shelton focuses on making lighter beers that add American attitude to the best European styles. He uses mostly German Czech Saaz hops as well as hops grown in the Halletauer region of Bavaria. These hops are characterized by pleasing, subtle bitterness, and Shelton uses quite a lot of them to get the level of bitterness he likes. Look out for other High and Mighty beers, including Purity of Essence (India Pale *Lager*), St. Hubbins Dubbel (brown Trappist ale), Two Headed Beast (creamy stout), and Home for the Holidays (unfiltered brown ale – profits go to Iraq and Afghanistan War Veterans of America). With the lower alcohol content, you might just be able to try them all!

-Amy

Often part of a brewery’s fall lineup, Pumpkin Ales range from rich brown brews to something resembling liquid pumpkin pie. Breweries fall along a spectrum of how true they are to the description “pumpkin,” with some cutting pumpkins by hand to add them to the mash, some using a puree, and others resorting to adding imitation pumpkin flavoring. A hard-core brewer going for a deeper, more complex taste may even roast the pumpkin before adding it to the mash. Pumpkin beers tend to be spiced with ground ginger, cloves, nutmeg, allspice and of course cinnamon. The combination of the gourd and spices result in a mild beer with balanced malts.

The pumpkin beer is particularly relevant here in New England, as we have the Pilgrims to thank for the fall tradition. Short on grains and most other food products, the starving Pilgrims relied heavily on the pumpkin after the Indians introduced it to them. To make the beer, they fermented the pumpkin with a combination of persimmons, hops and maple sugar.

I’ve listed below some popular local pumpkin beers, courtesy of the Boston Examiner. Next time you are at Venture Cafe, tell us which one is your favorite!
1) Shipyard Pumpkinhead
2) Cape Ann Pumpkin Stout
3) Post Road Pumpkin Ale, by Brooklyn Brewery
4) Southern Tier Imperial Pumpking
5) Shipyard Smashed Pumpkin
6) Weyerbacher Imperial Pumpkin Ale
7) Stone Cat Pumpkin Ale
8) Dogfish Head Punkin
9) Cisco Pumple Drumkin Spiced Ale
10) Smuttynose Pumpkin Ale

(For more information on these beers, please see http://www.examiner.com/craft-beer-in-boston/top-10-pumpkin-beers-available-new-england)

Last week, many Venture Café-ers inquired about the particularly yummy beer we were serving. Folks, it’s Pretty Things, Jack D’Or (Jack of Gold)! Dann Paquette’s Pretty Things Beer and Ale Project is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but the brewery is a “gypsy brewery,” with no permanent brewing home. Dann has made temporary homes at various local breweries including Ipswich Brewing Company, Pilgrim Brewery, Mill City Brewing Company, John Harvard’s Brew House, North East Brewing Company, and The Haverhill Brewery. Jack D’Or pours as Dann’s flagship beer.

Although Dann and his beer now reside in the US, the inspiration for Pretty Things beer came from the Ripon Cathedral in York, England. The cathedral formerly provided the background for the writing of “Through the Looking Glass,” and featured many pretty carvings in the choir. Dann took the cathedral’s creative spirit and applied it to brewing beer. Dann now includes hops and yeast in his register of pretty things, along with the cathedral carvings of his earlier days.

Other Pretty Things beers include Hedgerow Bitter, Field Mouse’s Farewell, Baby Tree, St. Botolph’s Town, Babayaga, American Darling, Confounded Mr. Sisyphys, and Fluggy White Rabbits. Want to taste them? To see where you can find Pretty Things beers, visit http://www.prettythingsbeertoday.com/site/node/5 and read Dann’s tips for enjoying his beer here http://www.prettythingsbeertoday.com/site/node/6.

I’m not a huge fan of the “seasonal beer,” but I have been looking forward to seeing the various Oktoberfest beers on the shelves. Oktoberfest beers are officially known as Maerzens. The name comes from the time of year historically designated for brewing in Bavaria, Germany: brewing season ended with spring and picked up again in the fall, because without modern refrigeration it was difficult to brew beer due to hot summer weather and bacteria. Thus, Bavarian beers were brewed in March (Maerzen), kept in cold storage, and liberated in the fall.

Maerzenbier features a medium to full body and its color can range from golden to reddish orange. The beer tastes sweet and malty, with a hint of clean, hop bitterness. The malt character is light-toasted, and alcohol content ranges slightly higher than the average beer: typically from 5-6%.

Listed below are the top Oktoberfest beers rated at the 2010 US Open Beer Championship. According to the expert beer guy at New Bay View Liquors, my favorite local package store in South Boston, the rumor is that Oktoberfests are weaker this year than in previous years. You’ll have to taste for yourself, so we’ll be sampling some seasonals in the coming months at Venture Cafe. Embrace the New England fall, even without the lederhosen and goat hair-tufted cowboy hats!

1. Snake River Lager – Snake River Brewing – Wyoming
2. Heavy Seas Marzen – Clipper City Brewing – Maryland
3. Capital Fest – Captial Brewery – Wisconsin
4. Paulaner Oktoberfest – Paulaner Salvator Thomasbraeu – Germany
5. Left Hand Oktoberfest – Left Hand Brewing – Colorado
6. Staghorn Octoberfest – New Glarus Brewing – Wisconsin
7. Great Lakes Oktoberfest – Great Lakes Brewing – Ohio
8. Dogtoberfest – Flying Dog Brewery – Maryland
9. Bell’s Octoberfest – Bell’s Brewery – Michigan
10. Ayinger Oktober Fest – Privatbrauerei Franz Inselkammer / Brauerei Aying

For beer advocate’s full report on Maerzens: http://beeradvocate.com/beer/style/29

The new beer on tap last week hailed from the Blue Hills Brewery, located in Canton, Massachusetts. The Brewery embraces its location in the Blue Hills and on the South Shore, and strives to demonstrate civic responsibility in addition to producing great beer.

Generally, Blue Hill Brewery beers go through two rounds of fermenting. The first found takes 7-9 days, and during the second round, the beer is chilled to around 40 degrees for another 7-10 days. After fermenting, the beer is filtered, carbonated, and kegged.

The classic Red Baron Ale incorporates a combination of specialty dark roasted malts, giving it a deep red color. The beer is only lightly hopped in order for the drinker to enjoy its complex malt character. The tongue registers sweetness at first taste, but Red Baron has a dry finish. Come try it out this week!

I set aside time this past weekend for some more very serious beer research. With Carrie slaving away on her thesis, I attended Julio’s Liquors Belgian Beer Fest with a group of beer enthusiasts. You may ask, as I did, what makes Belgian beers Belgian? I imagined there must be some unifying characteristic, as I’ve so often heard the term “Belgian beer” used as if I should understand exactly what it means.

Although I’d say vaguely that Belgians (the beers) tend to be sweeter and have higher alcohol content – I’ve heard them described as the bridge between wine and beer – they do not fall into any one defined category. In fact, Belgians (the people) have been brewing beer since the Middle Ages and now offer over 450 varieties of beer.

You may have heard of a few of these varieties. There’s the “Red Beer,” brewed from red barley, maize, and grits, which tastes sharp, sour and fruity. The Lambics, originally brewed in Belgian farmhouses, are brewed without cultured yeast and contain at least 30% unmalted wheat. The brew is exposed to the air during production so that wild yeasts bring about fermentation, producing an acidic, tart, dry beer. To balance the sourness of Lambics, some brewers add fruit. For example, “Kriekbiers” are made with cherries that stimulate secondary fermentation, and a “Framboise” includes raspberries. Additionally, White Beer, or “Witbier,” is a pale beer that includes malted barley and raw wheat, along with spices such as orange peel and coriander, producing a cloudy beer. Finally, many beer drinkers know about Trappist beers, which tend to be complex, strong, spicy, and top-fermented, with yeast added at the time of bottling for secondary fermentation. Technically “Trappist” may designate only beer brewed in six monasteries in Belgium, and “Abbey” applies to other commercial brewers producing beer in that style.

At Julio’s, I tried a variety of these styles. I tasted an IPA first, to get it over with because I don’t enjoy IPAs, but I was pleasantly surprised. The Duvel Houblon Chouffe Dobbelen IPA Tripel started out sweet and fruity, but the intitial taste was quickly balanced by the IPA hoppy bitterness. To me, this IPA Tripel is the IPA for those who don’t exactly savor an IPA. Next I watched the St. Bernadus Abt. 12 fall into my glass; this beer was sweetly malty but balanced, rich, and robust. My friends and I rushed to get a taste of Black Damnation (recipe 1, batch 2), a Russian Imperial Stout with a whopping 13% alcohol content. Black Damnation poured smoothly and darkly, with coffee and chocolate aromas, but had a surprisingly thin mouth and seemed to have a dry astringent taste.

Next in line was the Duchesse de Bourgogne – a Flanders Red Ale. It smelled vinegary and cherry-like, and its sourness made me pucker, although crisp carbonation and fruitiness helped to balance it out. It you like sours, the Duchesse is a good one to try. Finally, I tried the Cuvee von Der Keizer Rood, a Belgian Strong Pale Ale, which boasted sweet malts, Belgian yeast, floral and citrus tones, and a touch of honey. At 10% abv, the alcohol makes its presence known in the taste.

Always one for sharing, I left Julio’s with a couple of 22oz bottles for tasting. Combining Belgian style brewing with our preference for featuring local beers, I bought some Haverhill Belgian-style IPA, and a Haverhill Belgian-style Tripel. We’ll see if we can figure out these Belgians once and for all.

To learn more about Belgian beer brewing, see
http://www.beer-pages.com/stories/belgian-beer-guide.htm
http://www.bellaonline.org/articles/art41374.asp