For the February 2011 installment of The Session, Simon Johnson, of the Reluctant Scooper, asks beer bloggers across the globe to a address a straightforward yet complex question: cask, can, keg, or bottle? Simon says, “The question is simple but your answer may not be: Cask, Keg, Can, Bottle: Does dispense matter?” My answer is that it depends on the situation, there are pros and cons for each method. I’d also like to observe that Simon forgot one vessel: the growler.

If  you have been reading Beer 47 for a while, then you may already know about The Session. Those of you new to The Session, it is a virtual gathering of beer bloggers, who all write on a single subject on the first Friday of every month. It was started 48 months ago by Jay Brooks of Brookston Beer Bulletin and Stan Hieronymus of Appellation Beer.

To some folks, the method by which the beer is dispensed is of utmost importance. For me, on the other hand, it really depends on many more factors and each has method has their own distinct pros and cons.

I really enjoy beers on cask when I can find them fresh and in a place with high turnover. A fresh cask of beer can have a wonderful smooth creamy texture.  In general, I usually enjoy beer better at cellar temperatures, where the flavors and aromas are not masked by the cold, and cellar temperature is the proper serving temperature for cask ales. Casks are also naturally carbonated, which produces a much fine bubble.

Despite the benefits, awe, and reverence that casks have, there are down sides of cask conditioned beer. First, cask ales may not be as popular particular bars so the turnover rate will be lower resulting in old and flat beer. Next, the proper cask temperature (53º-57ºF) is not the same as room temperature and not all bars serve cask ales in this temperature range. This results in poorly stored, warm beer. Oddly enough, I’ve found that craft breweries in San Francisco take much better care of their kegs than most of the dozen or so pubs I visited in London back in August 2009.

Who doesn’t enjoy a good beer on draft? It is almost always handled and stored properly and even if the beer is weeks old it still tastes great. Furthermore, there are a few breweries that only offer their beer from kegs. Kegs are reusable. The environmental impact of kegs is also much lower than than of bottles and even cans. And you’re not going to find Pliny the Younger in anything but a keg.

One downside to kegs is that the serving temperature is usually very cold to prevent the beer from foaming up and I usually prefer my beer closer to 50ºF. I often get impatient waiting for the beer to warm up and indulge anyway. The other downside of a keg is that they are not portable. Even when you try to transport them, if you don’t get the beer cold enough or don’t let the beer settle, it will dispense foamy. I always run into this problem when bringing kegs of my home brew to parties.

Beer has been available in cans for decades, yet craft beer in cans is a relatively new occurrence. The benefits to cans are numerous. First, the beer never touches the metal, since all beer cans have lining for the purpose of preventing contact with the metal. Cans are more airtight (oxygen is bad for the beer) and prevent all light exposure. They are lighter, allowing more to be shipped on one truck at a time, and thereby using less fossil fuels which is good for both the brewer and the environment. Cans can also go where glass bottles cannot, such as golf courses, the beach, parks, hiking, etc. Finally, aluminum is easier to recycle and more often recycled than glass.

There is, however, some growing controversy around can. First, the surface mining of bauxite can have a environment impact on the areas from which it is mined. Next, the plastic lining in cans contains Bisphenol A, or BPA. Even though studies found that the amount of BPA found in soda (or beer) cans was low, it is a substance that can cause health problems. Check out the wikipedia article on BPA and other sources to make up your own mind on this matter.

Bottles offer the convenience of delivering your favorite craft beer from your own locality or from the other side of the globe. Furthermore, there certain beers that are offered in bottles and only bottles. For instance, Cantillon just would not be the same if it were made in a keg because bottling is a big part of the process of making their sour beer. Duvel is another example of a bottle only beer so much so that the draft version of Duvel was given a different name, Duvel Green. I would also venture to guess that bottles offer the most variety of beer to the consumer.

A few problems with bottles are that they are heavy and breakable. Not all breweries choose the proper color glass (brown) to bottle their beer, thereby allowing light to damage, or skunk, the beer. Brown bottles cut down significantly the amount of harmful light but stil are not 100% immune to the effects.

Finally, there is the growler. Most growlers are about 2L or close to 0.5 gallons and are filled or re-filled directly at the brewery or from your own kegs of home brew. They are highly re-useable and offer both portability and the variety of what is available at a local craft brewery. I once filled a growler, put it in a back back, and rode my bicycle from the brewery home without any problem.

The downside of growlers is that you need one growler for each brew pub. In California and many other states, breweries can only fill the growlers from their own brewery.

Which is my favorite? I really like the idea of the growler. It’s portable and reusable container can can be filling from most any keg (depending on the growler). I just wish the laws were more flexible for the filling of growlers.

For the past 47 months beer bloggers have been coordinating on a single topic to blog about on the first Friday of the month. This phenomenon is called The Session, which was started by Jay Brooks of Brookston Beer Bulletin and Stan Hieronymus of Appellation Beer. The topic of 47th installment of The Session, hosted here at Beer 47, was Cooking with Beer. The following is a recap of what the participating bloggers had to say about the subject. This subject brought out 21 bloggers and it made me very hungry reading all of these great blog posts.

Update (Jan. 18, 2011): The next Session will be hosted by Simon at The Reluctant Scooper. The topic will be Cask, Keg, Can, Bottle? Simon asks beer bloggers to talk about the container from which the beer is dispensed and how it affects the beer, if at all.

Stan Hieronymus shared on of his favorite brewpub recipes for Stilton Cheese Soup. This is a recipe that did not make it into a recipe book collection that he and his wife (Daria Labinsky) compiled, called The Brewpub Cookbook. This particular recipe was fromGreat Lakes Brewing in Cleveland, Ohio. “It’s rich, with a powerful, sharp Stilton flavor.”

Delran, NJ: Mel and Ray give us a recipe for Pulled Pork in Kolsch Sauce with Sauerkraut. It looks quite tasty and I wonder if you could make this in a slow cooker? The recipe calls for Kölsch but they also give some other good recommendations. “Your best bets are probably kolsch, anything Belgian (especially dubbel), brown ale, malty English beers and sweeter stouts (perhaps even a coffee stout).”

Germany: Barry hasn’t written a post for The Session in ages but couldn’t resist this topic because he tries to use beer in his cooking as often as he can. He provided a recipe for Black Beer Chili made with Schwarzbier, specifically Köstritzer. “I like adding beer to things. In small quantities, like in the chili below, it adds a little depth, a touch of sweetness, and a little bite. Too much, and it might dominate in the wrong way, especially true with bitter beers.”

Kent, United Kingdom: Mark also loves cooking with beer and provided 6 links to some of his favorite recipes, which all sound great. He goes on in detail about a recipe he enjoyed for Scotch Eggs and Beer Mayonaise and even provides some tips on how to make it. “Some people seem to think that cooking with beer is a terrible waste, but I’m not one of them. I love how it adds a different depth to food, how parts of the beer’s make-up come through in unique ways.”

Washington D.C.: Thomas tells us about a recipe called beer rice which calls for Budweiser. “From prep to eat, it’s no more than 60 minutes … And, yes, that’s a Bud in my blog.”

Belmont, CA: Derrick writes his post about drinking beer while cooking but warns us to be careful while we’re doing it because those knives are sharp. “When cooking, drinking a beer that pairs well with what’s on the menu helps me to focus better on what I’m preparing.”

Fredericksburg, VA: David creates a virtual meal of dishes made with beer or dishes that pair well with beer. On the menu: Red Pepper Crostini and Olivada, served with Heavy Seas Red Sky at Night, Slow Cooked Pale Ale Spicy Beef, and Beeramisu. David says the following about the spicy beef dish, “This simple recipe has become a staple in our household. It’s a crock pot recipe, so it is easy to prepare and it especially fitting for those days when we know we’ll be needing a quick dinner that evening.”

Southeast Pennsylvania: Although Steph doesn’t cook with beer very often, she provides a few suggestions and recipes for using beer in your food. Steph suggests braising meat such as beef and sausages, beer bread, and beer ice cream. “Play around with different styles — light, dark, mild, bold, malty, hoppy, low-alcohol, high-octane, whatevs. If it sucks, learn from that and try something different next time. If it’s awesome, revel in your culinary genius!”

UK: Simon writes about a few successful experiences with beer in food but focuses on the problems that you can encounter when adding beer to your dishes and why those problems occur. “I have some real issues with beer as an ingredient. Because I’ve had too many great-sounding dishes that wasted good beer and too many basic dishes that buggered up the very notion of using beer as an ingredient.”

Alan suggests using Allagash Odyssey in a mushroom dish with shallots, onions, leeks, and a bunch of mushrooms. “My favorite thing? Odyssey by Allagash in Maine is the greatest beer for making mushroom dishes.”

Sean doesn’t really cook so instead he offers up his dream beer dinner. He starts the meal with sharp cheddar quesadillas, moves to a Kobe flank steak in a Flanders Red spiked sauce, and ends with a dessert of apple pie a la mode with an apple beer ice cream. “And since I do not have many beer dinners under my belt either, I can’t really comment on what works really well and what doesn’t. I do know a good amount about beer floats (but that really doesn’t involve cooking).”

Indiana: Jim made a dish called Cod Brandade, which he found in a recent issue of Beer Connoisseur magazine. Being that this is quite a complicated recipe, Jim provides numerous tips to make it successfully. “The end result is sort of like fancy fish sticks, well fish balls, sitting on top of really fancy ketchup. That might not sound great to you, but it sounds excellent to me.”

Phoenix, AZ: The folks at Beer PHXation found a few restaurants, local to Phoenix, that use beer in their food. The let you know where you can get beer bread, beer pizza crust, and an oatmeal stout shake. They’ve also listed a few places that have beer dinners. “We hope you will seek out these dishes and others throughout the valley that use beer as an ingredient and explore cooking with beer at home. Not only does beer deserve a place on the dinner table, it should not be neglected on the plate either.”

Raleigh, NC: Dierdre made beer cheese soup and even provides the recipe and it looks delicious. She made the soup with Sam Adams Boston Ale and served it up with beer brats and red cabbage. “It’s important to select the right beer for this soup. If you like light malty lagers (the industry giants) they will probably work well, but they won’t add much flavor.”

A Beer in the Hand is Worth Two in the Fridge – Session #47- Beer Brownies

Central Pennsylvania: Jay has experimented making brownies with stouts and porters and provides us with a recipe from stout brownies from CraftBeer.com. ” What makes eating a delicious stout brownie even better is that you can wash it down with another stout. If you use a milk stout for in the brownie, try Lancaster Milk Stout, I would think that milk would wash the brownie down as well as anything else.”

UK: Bob explains that he usually doesn’t like to waste good beer on food but has recently been using a botched batch of homebrew for cooking. He provides a quick recipe for making his tempura vegetables and the beer he chose was Adnams Spindrift. In the end Bob concludes, “To be honest, I don’t think using beer for tempura batter is the best use for your beer, especially a light a fruity number like Spindrift. Neither my wife nor I could detect any beery flavours in the batter, although I thought the beer actually went quite well as a pairing.”

Canada: Devoid loves cooking with beer and gives us a tasty chicken recipe for the BBQ. “I personally love to cook with beer. Some of the tastiest meals I’ve prepared with beer have been the simplest like Camembert cheese and beer melt.”

Bend, OR: Jon doesn’t really cook with beer so he tried something quite unconventional. He made a hot mulled beer that sounds very intriguing. Jon finishes by making a New Year resolution, “I think for 2011 I will start to do some in-depth exploration of cooking with beer. Beginning with some mulled beer this weekend.”

Joe is another blogger that like to have a beer while cooking and not necessarily using it as an ingredient in food recipes. He did try cooking with beer once and says, “Once I made a carbonnade with Westvleteren. What a damnable waste.”

San Jose, CA: Peter teamed up with a friend of his, Arie, to cook with beer, specifically beer bread. This is no ordinary beer bread, Peter tells us that Arie has been cooking beer for decades and you can tell by the photos alone. Peter does a great job of chronicling exactly how to make the bread, complete with photos. I can’t wait to try this out. “After having Arie’s bread, I can easily see how civilizations have been powered by the simple loaf.”

San Francisco, CA: For my contribution I made three different recipes, which I found from various sources: Norwegian lamb patties with spiced baltic porter gravy, Kölsch chevre spinach salad, and beer brats. I also discovered that you need to pay attention to the bitterness of the beer that you are using for cooking. “Be very careful of your selection of beer for your recipe. Try adding a little at a time and see how it tastes to make sure it doesn’t come out too bitter. If the recipe calls for a style that is not normally bitter, then stick with the maltier less bitter styles of beer.”

Related Posts

• Blogger Roundup of Cooking with Beer for The Session #47
• Cooking with Beer: Lamb Patties, Kölsch Salad, & Beer Brats for The Session #47
• Cooking with Beer, Announcing The Session #47
• Round Up for The Session #30: Beer Desserts
• Beer Desserts for The Session #30
• Announcing The Session #30: Beer Desserts
• Smoky Maple-Porter BBQ Sauce

A few weeks ago, I announced that Beer 47 will be hosting The Sesssion #47 and the topic is Cooking with Beer. For my contribution to this topic I chose to find a few recipes, cook them, and report the results. I made three dishes: Norwegian lamb patties with spiced baltic porter gravy, Kölsch chevre spinach salad, and beer brats.

Norwegian Lamb Patties with Gravy

When I first came up with this topic for The Session #47, I was browsing the September 2010 issue of the home brewing magazine Brew Your Own [Amazon] and there was an article about cooking with your home brew. One recipe that caught my eye was the Norwegian Lamb Patties and Gravy made with Baltic Porter. Based on what was available in the pantry, I made a few minor changes to the recipe. For instance, tapioca starch instead of corn starch and olive oil instead of rendered fat. The beer that I used for this recipe was Victory Baltic Thunder, a double baltic-porter with a sweet malty flavor, high alcohol content, brown color, and some bitterness. I was actually not expecting the flavors that I experienced from this beer. It didn’t seem very porter-like and it lacked many characteristics that I would expect from a porter, like roastiness. Victory Baltic Thunder seemed more like a double-brown-ale or barleywine with some added bitterness.

Norwegian Lamb Patties with Spiced Baltic Porter Gravy Recipe

This is a modified version of a recipe by Sean Paxton that appeared in the September 2010 issue of Brew Your Own magazine.

• 1 lb. ground lamb
• 1 egg
• 3/4 cup milk
• 4 oz. Baltic porter (preferably room temperature and flat)
• 1 tsp. sea salt
• 1/2 tsp. cracked black pepper
• 1 large yellow onion, chopped
• 2 tbsp. all purpose flour
• 1.5 tbsp. tapioca starch (or cornstarch)
• 2-3 tbsp. olive oil

• 2-3 tbsp. all purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp. ground clove
• 1/2 tsp.  ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp. ground allspice
• 1/2 tsp. fresh ground ginger
• 1 cup Baltic porter (preferably room temperature and flat)
• 1 cup hot beef stock

In a bowl mix lamb, egg, milk, 4 oz. porter, salt, and pepper. I really didn’t want to clean even more kitchen tools so instead of using the Kitchen Aid mixer for this step, I mixed the lamb patties by hand. It worked out fine but I really had to whip them up with my hands quickly to get the right texture. Next time I would definitely use a mixer. You want the mixture to be light and fluffy.

Next, in a pan, heat the olive oil over medium-high heat. Make patties about the size of silver-dollar pancakes (a little larger than a silver dollar) and put the patties into the oil and cook until browned on each side. The patties should have a nice brown crusty appearance but not burned. After the patties are cooked on each side, to keet them warm, remove them from the oil and put them in the oven at 300ºF.

Reduce the heat on the pan, add 2-3 tbsp of flour, and whisk until the flour has absorbed. My mixture turned out to be a dark brown color but the recipe says that it should be light golden brown. I probably also added too much flour at this point. I recommend adding 1 tbsp. at a time until you get the texture you want. Next, add the spices, cook for about a minute, and then add the porter and beef stock. Cook for about 5 minutes to reduce, burn off the alcohol, and cook out the flour flavor.

This is the point at which I discovered that the gravy did not turn out as expected. It was extremely bitter.

When I sampled the lamp, however, before putting it into the oven, it had a really nice flavor and texture with a hint of sweetness from the beer and just tinge of bitterness. The lamb patties, on their own, were actually very good and my wife and I enjoyed them as leftovers the next day. The gravy, however, was much too thick, extremely bitter, and not very good at all. It smelled nice, a bit like spiced apple cider, but it wasn’t quite salty enough and the bitterness was overwhelming. In order to fix the problem, I kept adding sugar and salt until the gravy tasted okay. I added much more salt than sugar and although I didn’t record the amont I added, it seemed like a lot of sugar with a reasonable amount of salt.

I attribute the extreme bitterness of the gravy to three things. First, the crusty stuff in the pan after I took out the lamb patties was a little dark and charred, the lamb patties, however, tasted fine so this maybe only added a small amount of bitterness. Next, the total volume of the spice blend, to me, seemed enormous for the amount of gravy being made. I would use a similar amount of spice in an entire 5 gallon batch of beer. To test this theory, I licked some left over ground spices and it was indeed bitter. Finally, the beer that I used was much more bitter than I expected. I should have looked up some reviews of Victory Baltic Thunder to understand the flavor of the beer. I should have also realized that being a double-style beer, it would have higher IBUs to balance the sweetness of the beer. I think the beer was the true culprit but the other factors certainly contributed.

Beer Brats and Kölsch Chevre Spinach Salad

Since my first attempt at a meal made with beer was a limited success I wanted to try again with two more recipes. I also wanted to do something that would be somewhat quick to make. I looked through Sam Calagione’s book Extreme Brewing [Amazon] and found an interesting recipe for Warm Pilsner Chevre Spinach Salad. Next, I scoured the internet for a beer brats recipe. A found a few variations that were basically the same as the Beer Brats recipe on About.com and it only required four ingredients: cooking oil, bratwurst, onions, and beer.

Since the beer brats would take only a few minutes to make, I made the Kölsch Chevre Spinach Salad first. I also wanted to allow the dressing time to cool down from boiling hot to warm before I used it in the salad. The original recipe called for a pilsner style beer but I couldn’t find any craft Pilsner at my local Whole Foods so I picked up a 22 oz. bottle of Kent Lake Kölsch-style Ale made by Iron Springs Brewery in Fairfax, California.

Warm Kölsch Chevre Spinach Salad

• 4 oz. dried cranberries
• a bunch of spinach
• 4 oz. chevre goat cheese

• 1 cup almonds, chopped (or sliced)
• 1/2 tsp. ground cloves
• 1/2 tsp. fresh ground nutmeg
• 5 oz. honey
• sugar to taste
• 12 oz. of Kölsch beer, (preferably room temperature and flat)
• 2 tsp. vanilla extract
• 3 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil

First, dry roast the almonds, cloves, and nutmeg over medium heat in a pan. I used the pan in the photo below. Stir or toss so that the spices don’t burn and cook until the almonds are darkened. Set aside. Pour the honey into the pan. The gooey texture of the honey will become much more watery when it hits the heat. The original recipe calls for a lot of demerara sugar so I just added sugar a little bit at a time to taste. Cook on medium heat until it simmers. Next, add the Kölsch and cook until it simmers. Then, add vanilla and olive oil. No, it won’t explode when you add the oil but be careful anyway. Simmer this mixture until the volume has reduced by about half. Turn off the heat and let cool from boiling to warm. Crumble the cheese and put it with the spinach and cranberries in a bowl. Pour the warm dressing in the bowl and toss to coat. Serve immediately.

The salad came out delicious and it was by far the best of the three recipes that I made. I let the dressing cool down just enough to only wilt the spinach a little bit. Since I mixed the chevre goat cheese before I added the dressing, it mostly melted and become a part of the dressing so I crumbled a little on top before serving. Although, it was very tasty like that, next time I would add the cheese last and quickly toss it just before serving. Even doing this, some of the cheese will likely melt but I’m thinking you’ll have a few more big chunks to enjoy. I would definitely make this dish again.

For the beer brats, I wanted a beer that would work well with the sausages, that I’ve had before and that I knew would not be bitter. I selected Moose Drool Brown Ale from Big Sky Brewing Company. I changed the recipe slightly by using only three bratwurst instead of six. I picked up the bratwurst at Whole Foods where they are fresh made, as you can see in the photo.

Beer Brats Recipe

• olive oil, enough to cover the bottom of your pan
• 1 medium sized red onion, cut into rounds
• 3 bratwurst sausages
• 6 oz. of Moose Drool Brown Ale, preferably flat and room temperature

Instructions

Heat the oil in a pan over medium-high heat, add sausages, and brown them. Have the lid to the pan handy in case it starts to sputter and splash oil. Next, remove the sausages, they should be mostly cooked through. You’ll be adding the sausages back later. If needed, add more olive oil. Add the the onion rounds to the pan and saute them until they are translucent and golden but not brown. Add the bratwurst and the beer to the pan. Let the sauce reduce down until it is thick.<

The beer brats came out great. The sausage was cooked just right, tender and not dry. The sauce was sweet and rich from the onions and beer and it went great with the Kölsch Chevre Salad. There was still, however, just a slight tinge of bitterness, it wasn’t distracting but it makes think that I should have used a sweet onion, like a Maui or Vidalia. I really enjoyed this recipe and would definitely make it again and even try it with different styles of beer.

Final Thoughts

Be very careful of your selection of beer for your recipe. Try adding a little at a time and see how it tastes to make sure it doesn’t come out too bitter. If the recipe calls for a style that is not normally bitter, then stick with the maltier less bitter styles of beer. Even if the recipe calls for an IPA, I would stay away from double-IPAs or hop bombs unless the recipe looks like it will balance out that extreme bitter flavor. Just use a typical IPA like Lagunitas IPA, Sierra Nevada, or similar.

It also helps to choose a recipe from a reputable source, like the Home Brew Chef, Sean Paxton, or books specific to the subject. I have found that the food recipes in Sam Calagione’s book Extreme Brewing [Amazon] have all been very solid. Although I do wish his book had more recipes! If you find a recipe from another source, I would personally be wary of recipes that don’t include something sweet like sugar, honey, caramelized onions, roasted or sautéed garlic.

Finally, enjoy yourself while cooking with beer!

Related Posts

• Blogger Roundup of Cooking with Beer for The Session #47
• Cooking with Beer: Lamb Patties, Kölsch Salad, & Beer Brats for The Session #47
• Cooking with Beer, Announcing The Session #47
• Round Up for The Session #30: Beer Desserts
• Beer Desserts for The Session #30
• Announcing The Session #30: Beer Desserts
• Smoky Maple-Porter BBQ Sauce

Despite my claim that beer is under-utilized there are definitely some uses of beer in cuisine such as beer-can-chicken, beer bread, beer brats, and beer battered deep-fried foods. What else have you made or tasted made with beer?

Since the topic of Cooking with Beer is broad, I invite you to share any experience that you have had with beer as an ingredient in food or for cooking. I only ask that you be sure to include other dishes besides (or in addition to) dessert, the reason being that we have already discussed Beer Desserts for The Session #30. You don’t need to exclude dessert, just please do not limit your discussion to dessert only. If you need some more inspiration for this topic, here are some more ideas:

• Find a recipe that includes beer as an ingredient, share the recipe, cook it, and tell us the results.
• Talk about a meal prepared by somebody else (by a friend or at a restaurant) that used beer as an ingredient.
• What is the best dish you’ve had made with beer? The worst?
• What are some of the challenges in cooking with beer whether it be a savory or a sweet dish?
• What does beer add to a dish?

The Sessions is a monthly beer blogging event that invites any beer blogger to participate by writing their own perspective on a unique topic regarding beer. Each topic is announced one month in advance (sorry for being a bit late on this one) of the first Friday of each month. You can write your blog post in advance or on the first Friday of the month. Following the submission of your blog posts, as the host, I will write a brief wrap-up of each of the posts. The Session #47 will be the first one of the New Year on Friday, January 7, 2011. The Sessions was started by Jay Brooks of Brookston Beer Bulletin and Stan Hieronymus of Appellation Beer.

I look forward to some great mouthwatering articles and recipes about cooking with beer!

Related Posts

• Blogger Roundup of Cooking with Beer for The Session #47
• Cooking with Beer: Lamb Patties, Kölsch Salad, & Beer Brats for The Session #47
• Cooking with Beer, Announcing The Session #47
• Round Up for The Session #30: Beer Desserts
• Beer Desserts for The Session #30
• Announcing The Session #30: Beer Desserts
• Smoky Maple-Porter BBQ Sauce

Each month a different blog selects a topic and hosts a conversation of bloggers called The Sessions. The topic for The Session #46, hosted by Mike Lynch of Burgers and Brews, is to discuss An Unexpected Discovery, a beer experience that took you by surprise. I was originally not going to participate in this topic because I couldn’t think of a good story but lo and behold a few days ago I discovered Amsterdam Cafe in San Francisco less than 10 minutes, walking, from where I live.

My discovery of Amsterdam Cafe came in two stages.

Part 1. The day after Thanksgiving a bunch of friends were visiting from out of town and we were out drinking in San Francisco. Towards the end of the night we ended  up at Edinburgh Castle, a pub on Geary and Polk, which was a location used in So I Married an Axe Murderer. It was a decent enough pub with the standard 2-3 craft beers you see everywhere in SF with the addition of Moylan’s Kilt Lifter Scotch Ale. When we left Edinbugh Castle, I noticed a place directly across the street with four beer signs in the window and one of them was Lost Coast’s Great White. I thought to myself or I told somebody, “I wonder what kind of beer selection they have in there” but I neglected to make note of the name of the place to check out later. At that moment, we should have just crossed the street and checked it out but instead we continued on to someplace else.

Part 2. Four days later, or last Tuesday, a friend of mine, Tim, called and left a voicemail saying that he was with a mutual friend, Jan, at Triple Rock in Berkeley and was wondering if I would like to join them. Of course I would have liked to join them, especially since I haven’t been there yet, but it was the middle of the afternoon and I was in meetings. So I called back and we coordinated to meet up at my place when they returned to the city (San Francisco). When Tim and Jan arrived, we tried to figure out where to go grab a good craft beer nearby and concluded that Polk St. just doesn’t have any good craft beer bars like Church Key, Toronado, Monk’s Kettle, and so on. This is when Jan suggested a place that she had been to about a year ago but her recollection on the selection and availability of craft beer wasn’t clear. She thought they might have some decent stuff and that it was called Amsterdam Cafe located directly across from Edinburgh Castle. Wait a minute! I was just wondering about that place 4 days ago. And so we headed down from Nob Hill to the Tenderloin to check out Amsterdam Cafe.

The second we walked in the door, I knew this was an unexpected discovery. There were much more than a few good beers on tap. They had 14 craft beers on tap plus Guinness and, like bookends for the taps, were two large refrigerators packed with bottles of craft beer. When I asked about the number of different bottles, the estimate was over 250. Not only do they have the bottles in the fridge but also bottles under the bar and some in the basement and all of the bottles are stored properly, cold.

The menu is quite extensive but they have seasonal beers and others that are not listed. Your best bet is to scan the menu, inspect the fridges, and ask about special releases. I noticed a bottle of Stone Double Bastard (not on the menu) so I asked if they had Stone Lukcy Basartd and they did! Not only did I find a new neighborhood (close enough) beer bar but also I was able to get the beer that I was craving at that very moment, one of my new favorites made by Stone Brewing. That’s two unexpected discoveries in one night.

All of this occurred while not recalling what The Session topic was for the upcoming Friday; the Friday immediately following my first visit to Amsterdam Cafe. Over the weekend, after The Sessions Friday, I was getting ready to write an announcement post for The Session #47, which I will be hosting on Jan. 7, 2011, and I visited the blog hosting The Session #46, Burgers and Brews. This was when I remembered the topic and that my recent experience would be perfect for this Session. I contacted Mike to see if it was too late to get my entry included in the Wrapup and he said it was not too late, but I had to explain why I was late. The next Monday, I went back to Amsterdam Cafe to take some photos, try some of their food, and take some photos.

There’s my story. As a result of my unexpected discovery I’ve found my new favorite neighborhood spot to grab a craft beer: Amsterdam Cafe.

Now, if your curious about this somewhat new San Francisco beer bar, then read on. Amsterdam Cafe has been around for over a year and is located at 937 Geary between Larkin and Polk in the Tenderloin neighborhood. The neighborhood itself isn’t the greatest but it is actually located near other bars and nightlife, such at Edinburgh Castle, R-Bar, Tommy’s Joint, and so on. The inside of the bar is roughly equivalent to other bars in the area; not quite a dive but definitely not a posh lounge. It’s comfortable, decorated, there’s art for sale,  and there is a nice eclectic mix of familiar and unfamiliar music. I enjoyed hanging out there and talking with friends. It wasn’t too loud but I have not been there on a weekend so I don’t know if it gets packed or not.

As mentioned before, they have 15 taps and roughly half of those are consistently the same. The others change somewhat regularly. They also have on the order of 200 to 250 different bottles available. The prices for beer are reasonable and not outrageous. For instance, it’s probably 30-40% cheaper than Monk’s Kettle.

They do serve food but the first night I was there the bartender said that food is only available before 2:30pm. I tried the food and it is about what you would expect from convenience food, made with a deep fryer, in a tiny kitchen, and prepared by a bartender. I had the cordon bleu sandwich and it was just okay. They do however allow you to bring in your own food from outside and there are several nearby restaurants, including the Little Saigon area.

They also have artisan coffee (currently from Coffee Magic), free WiFi (for you AT&T customers like me who have trouble using 3G almost anywhere in SF), open patio in the front, a flat screen TV, and hookah for $10.

I hope my unexpected discovery leads you to check out this great neighborhood beer bar. If you live in SF and enjoy craft beer in a comfortable environment, you must check this place out. If you don’t live in SF, put this place on your list to visit or come out for SF Beer Week.

Other posts about San Francisco

• Stout Day Celebration in San Francisco
• Photos from International IPA Day at Rosamunde
• IPA Day San Francisco presented by Rosamunde & Beer 47
• 2011 Craft Brewers Conference Welcome Reception at the Academy of Sciences
• Sierra Nevada Dinner at Bar Crudo, SF Beer Week 2011

Appropriately chosen for Halloween, October’s topic for The Session is Frankenstein beer. This topic for The Session #44 was chosen and is hosted by Ashley V. Routson (@TheBeerWench) on her blog Drink With the Wench. The guidelines for the topic of “Frankenstein beers” were given as follows:

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to write a blog post on “Frankenstein Beers.” There are no rules about how to write about this topic — feel free to highlight a Frankenstien brewer, brewery, beer tasting notes … or just your opinions on the concept.

In the story, Frankenstein was a scientist of sorts who had brought to life a creature made from both human parts and non-human parts. The creature was also larger than life at about eight feet tall. If I were to consider this an analogy for specific beers, I would look at the beers that are crafted from both typical beer ingredients and non-typical beer ingredients. I would also consider big, experimental beer. Sometimes these beers will be characteristic of the brewery and sometimes they are a special release, an experiment.

One brewery that comes to mind for being particularly experimental and almost downright crazy at times is BrewDog in Scotland. Many of their special release beers are not only experimental and pushing the limits but so is the marketing that goes along with it. On the mild end of the spectrum, the offer a lager, 77 Lager, hopped with Amarillo hops, not something typically used with lagers. On the extreme end of the spectrum is The End of History, a beer containing 55% alcohol by volume and bottled inside of a taxidermy-squirrel. Somewhere in between are beers like Dogma, which is an ale brewed with honey, kola nut, poppy seed, and guarana, and measures in at mere 7.8% alcohol by volume. Just like Frankenstein, BrewDog is pushing the limits, and also like Frankenstein, the intention was to create something beautiful. BrewDog, however, sometimes falls short of this. By creating monstrosities of beers, sometimes the flavor is sacrificed. I’ve heard second hand that Tactical Nuclear Penguin and Sink the Bismark are not very good. From my experience with Dogma, the beer was interesting and I could appreciate the concept but it didn’t blow me away. On the other hand, many of the beers produced by BrewDog get very good ratings on BeerAdvocate and RateBeer.

Another approach to Frankenstein beer is to take two different beers and blend them together. Southern Tier Brewing Company of Lakewood, NY has done this with their Gemini Imperial Blended Unfiltered Ale. This beer combines two big beers from this brewery, Hoppe & Unearthly, to produce a very tasty Frankenstein beer. It is a wonderfully balanced strongly hopped beer with flowery citrus aromas and sweet malty flavors with a snap of intensely wonderful hop bitternes. For more details, I have an upcoming review of this beer.

Another was to make you beer monstrous is to experiment with color. Magic Hat Brewing in Vermont has a beer called Wacko, a beer made with beet juice color. Why beets? It makes the beer red and South Burlington, VT is the beet juice capital of New England and the home of Magic Hat. Unfortunately, by the time I opened my bottle, maybe due some shipping or storage mishap, the redness was out of the beer, it was just a slightly orange-pink color when I tried it the other night.

There are numerous other experiments with beer that could classify them as Frankenstein beer. For instance, creating new styles like India Black Ale (a.k.a. Cascadia Dark Ale, a.k.a. Black IPA), or Belgo IPA certainly started off as experimental but has eventually come to be accepted as an “official” style.

Beer inoculated with Brettanomyces, made with fruit or vegetables, aged with various types of wood, made with hrebs and spices, or even all of the above; all of these beers could be considered Frankenstein but unlike Frankenstein’s monster they all have an accepted place in the craft beer world. You or I may not like a particular experiment but we can appreciate the creativity and the craftsmanship used to construct the beer and we also that somebody else probably enjoys it. But, for the most part, I’m enjoying all of this wonderful experimentation and creativity in the craft beer world to create these so called Frankenstein beers.

The Session #39 is being hosted by Mario Rubio at The Hop Press and the topic is Collaborations. The instructions for this Session were as follows:

Drink a collaborative beer. Who’s brewed some of your favorite collaborations? Who have been some of your favorite collaborators? Who would you like to see in a future collaboration? As the topic is collaborations, working with each other is encouraged.

Although I haven’t participated in the Session for a few months now, I couldn’t miss participating in this topic. Even though I’ve been a craft beer drinker for a number of years and I’ve been operating this blog for a year and a half, I can only recall one collaboration beer that I’ve tried. I was the SF Brewer’s Guild Imperial Common, which was available during SF Beer Week 2010. Although, the Imperial Common was a wonderful beer and a very appropriate style. In preparation for this topic, since I could not fill an entire article about one beer, I picked up a number of collaboration beers with plans to review each one before today. I picked up:

• Mikkeller-BrewDog Devine Rebel
• Sierra Nevada (with Anchor Brewing) 30th Anniversary Stout
• BrewDog-Cambridge-Stone Juxtaposition Black Pilsner
• 21st Amendment-Firestone Walker-Stone El Camino (Un)Real Black Ale
• Nøgne Ø-Jolly Pumpkin-Stone Special Holiday Ale
• Nøgne Ø-Gahr Smith-Gahrsen Andrímnir Barley Wine Ale

The 21A-Firestone-Stone collaboration was especially difficult to track down but thanks to @wesleybeero, I got the last bottle from the Potrero Hill Whole Foods. I was all set last Saturday to crack open one of these bottles when I came down with a cold that just wouldn’t quit, all week long. So I’ll eventually get around to reviewing each of these beers and when I do, I’ll update the above list with links to each review. I did, however, crack open the Mikkeller-BrewDog last Wednesday and you can read the review of Devine Rebel here.

Since I’m not able to go over each collaboration beer, I’ll discuss the topic of collaboration beers in general.

In general, collaborations are a great way for beer makers to get together with different points of view and create something that either may not have made on their own. Getting together for a collaboration also might just be an excuse to make something completely wacky but why not if the resulting product turns out well?

Collaborations are also a great way to promote homebrewing and an awesome prize for homebrewers. The bottle of Nøgne Ø Andrímnir Barley Wine Ale was actually brewed by the winner of a homebrew competition at the Nøgne Ø brewery. More well known is the Sam Adams Longshot American Homebrew Contest, where, again, the winners of the competition get to brew their winning beer at Sam Adams to be later sold in stores. There is even a category of the Great American Beer Festival specifically for this type of collaboration, Pro-Am. Finally, some even local breweries have regulars that have a good relationship with the owner or head brewr to the point where they are invited to collaborate and brew in the brewery. Since I never-ever-ever plan on owning my own brewery, this type of homebrewer-professional collaboration is very appealing given that this would be the only way I could ever brew “like a pro” and collaborate with a brewery.

And then there are collaborators that are in a unique category of there own like Mikkeller. Mikkeller isn’t a traditional brewery, it’s Danish brewer, Mikkel Borg Bjergsø, who goes around Europe and the United States brewing and collaborating at other breweries to produce a very unique line of beer.

It’s also a great marketing vehicle from a few perspectives. First, it gets out the name of several breweries for one release. You may have heard of Stone Brewing of San Deigo but maybe not Nøgne Ø of Denmark. Next, these collaborations are usually able to brew something a little out of the ordinary (even more so than usual) and still manage to sell the product. By having a limited release breweries can use word-of-mouth marketing and a necessarily scarce product to produce demand that well exceeds supply. In most cases this does not result in higher prices but some stores do take advantage of the “uniqueness” of the beer to hike the rates. This starts to bring us to the dark side of collaborations and special release beer in general. Certain beer becomes so rare that collectors must grab up every bottle they can find at the determent of the beer community at large. During SF Beer Week somebody sent me a picture of some douchebag who posted a picture boasting how much Pliny the Younger he hoarded. Limited edition beers can also lead you on a journey (annoying or enlightening) to new beer stores to find what you’re looking for.

How do you feel about collaboration beer?

]]> http://beer47.com/2010/05/the-session-39-collaborations/feed/ 2 http://beer47.com/2009/09/favorite-summer-beers-of-2009/ http://beer47.com/2009/09/favorite-summer-beers-of-2009/#comments Sun, 06 Sep 2009 21:00:48 +0000 David Jensen http://beer47.com/?p=697 Continue reading →]]>

For the September, BetterBeerBlog is hosting with the topic of Summer Beer for The Session #31. Peter asks the simple question, “what was your favorite beer of the summer?” On the surface, this is a simple question but for this topic the beer doesn’t even need to be a summer beer style, just your favorite beer of this or any other summer.

This year, I don’t have one favorite, I have 6 and I barely recall what all 6 were. I didn’t write them down, didn’t review them, and took maybe 1 picture one of them. In fact, I had to dig to get the names for this article. I just enjoyed them in the moment. These “favorite” 6 beers of the summer were the ones that were paired with a wonderful meal that my wife and I ate at Den Dijver in Bruges, Belgium less than 4 weeks ago.

Why these six beers? First and foremost, it was the memory of the situation: we were together in Brugge, a beautiful European Medieval town, the weather was perfect, we were eating lunch outside in a garden patio, the food was exquisite, the beer was delicious, and the pairings were perfect. The whole situation was very enjoyable and memorable.

The beer pairing, itself, was another reason why these were my favorite beers of the summer. Each course had exactly the right beer to go with the dish. One particularly memorable pairing was grilled sardines and a hoppy, bitter Belgian beer. Sardines have a very strong flavor but this hoppy beer held up and was a strong counterpart that complimented the fish. Another great pairing was an dry, tart oude geuze paired with a cheese for dessert.

Finally, the beers themselves were excellent on their own. We had the house beer, which I think was something by Halve Maan, the only brewery in the city limits of Brugge, Koriala from Brouwerij Lupiline, Steenbrugge Wit from Brouwerij Palm, Chimay Cinq Cents, Moinette Brune from Brasserie Dupont, and Oude Geuze from Brouwerij Cantillon.

In summary, my favorite summer beers of 2009 and possibly all time were more centered around the circumstances in which we enjoyed them than the quality of each beer on its own. That is now to say, however, that these 6 beers are not excellent on their own but had I enjoyed any one of these beers in a different circumstance during the summer, they would not have been my favorite beers of the summer.