Of Beer

So here we are back in the saddle again.  Join me now and experience more beer snobbery with me and my trusty cohorts as we fixate our palates on some...beer.  Ok, so this time we are checking out a two solid samplings from a microbrewery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  Back to the beer capitol for some good old piss-makers.  DJ, play that Jam.

Lakefront brewery is the child of a two brothers, a chemical engineer and a Milwaukee cop.  Jesus, this already sounds like a reality TV show waiting to happen.  So, anyway, these two brothers; let's call them Russ and Jim Klisch because those are their names, were tooling around M-town flexin' and showin' off their sweet brewing skills to all the flashy hotties up in beer-city in the mid 80's.  Russ was apparently a pimp with the homebrewing bitches.  Flash forward to 1987 and these two cheese-heads win some prizes at the State Fair, no shit.  So the immediately decide to go into business.

Let's recap that for a second.  Dudes make some beer that their family and friends enjoy.  So they enter it in some contest at the State Fair.  They win, so they say 'fuck it' and start a business.  That's America, people.

So, these wild and/or crazy guys pull together about $15k and put a down-payment on an old neighborhood bakery.  They start out with a couple beers, get featured in the local bars, and work their asses off getting this thing going.  Here's the deal, they both still have their day-jobs at this point.  Flash forward to 1996 and they are grossing $200k in sales and they've both left their jobs to pimp to the beer bitches even harder.  What does that earn them?  The distinction of being voted "Best Brewery Tour in Milwaukee" by Milwaukee Magazine, that's what.  And considering the number of breweries in Milwaukee, that's pretty darn good.

It's like Little Orphan Annie...only instead of an adorable little red-haired orphan you got a chemical engineer and a cop, and instead of a lovable scruffy doggy name Sandy you have some yeast, malt, and hops, and instead of Daddy Warbucks...fuck it, its EXACTLY like Little Orphan Annie.

( The sun will come out tomorrow...bet yer ass )

So, two years later and a few hundred beers down the gullet, I've decided to return to keeping this beer diary.  I mean, hell, I have a ton of downed and logged to call back to.  So, why not?  I"m not going to promise anything regular, but I will try to keep it interesting.

Leaving where we left off, next up is a review of two Lakefront Brewery brews, Snake Chaser stout and Riverwest Stein Beer.  We apparently enjoyed them...so, yeah, lets kick this pig.

Lawdy lawdy its been a while but I have a couple good excuses.  Well actually just one good reason, but its a whopper.  I got married.  Sorry ladies (and gentlemen) but the fish has been landed.  Anyway enough about life lets look at some beer.

This installment finds us at the Brooklyn Brewery in sunny New York City.  When you think about American beer brewing locales your mind will probably falls squarely in Milwaukee.  I expect that no one reading this right now would blurt out Brooklyn in a Family Feud round where the subject was major beer brewing cities in the United States.  But about a hundred years ago Brooklyn was home to 50 or so great German breweries fueled by the blood, sweat, and tears of thousands of German immigrants.  Unfortunately, nothing gold can stay.  Not even the beautiful golden hues of a freshly micro-brewed German libationary masterpiece.  In 1976, these family owned breweries crumpled under the competition imposed by the burgeoning Midwest macro-breweries; and, as they say, everything went down the pisser.

So, fast forward to 1978 with Associated Press correspondent Steve Hindy.  Steve-o take a trip to the Middle East where Islamic law has forced the production of alcohol out of the market and into the home.  Steve meets some rockin' middle-eastern brewmasters and decides to take a chunk of knowledge home with him back to good ol' Brooklyn.  You see where this is going, yet?  Awesome.  So, out hero returns to the motherland and hooks up with his downstairs neighbor, a loan officer at Chemical Bank, by the name of Tom Potter.  Tom takes an interest in the beer, Tom and Steve watch some Mets games together, and sometime around 1986 (probably after seeing Labyrinth on the big screen together) Steve and Tom decide to take the plunge and open up a micro-brewery.  I mean David Bowie's package is like 'whoa' in that movie.  In 1987 Brooklyn Brewery finally opens.

If you just read all of that bull, you deserve a medal...or like nine medals.  Anyway...

Kicking off the domestic microbrews with the first of the series coming to me from Malt of the Earth.  The Shipyard Brewing Company's two flagship brews will be the subject of this entry so let's take a little gander at exactly who the Shipyard Brewing Company is.  Shipyard comes to us out of Kennebunk, Maine and is built on the site of three historic 19th century shipyards, hence the name.  Facts and fictions notwithstanding, down to the tacks.  It was bought by a real-estate consultant in 1992 who had no interest in going into the brew-pub business (for shame).  But he met an English brewmaster and changed his tune.  So, deciding to bring a bit of English beer to New England, they set up shop and the rest is, as they say, history.

Let's take a look at how they score.

We decided to test our newly crafted rubric with a beer we all enjoy and are familiar with. For this we chose the champagne of beers, Madame Miller High Life. (It should be noted that beer is in fact far better than champagne. Therefore I postulate that Miller High Life is actually the beer of beers.)

So, long time no see.  Them’s the breaks.  I’ve recently been convinced to delve back into the world of beer blogging even though I never really got into it to begin with.  I had 20 domestic micro-brewed beverages to weigh in on and no heart to take it on.  Luckily, my friends John, Jason , and Jeremy stepped up to the plate and convinced me that sitting down and drinking all of the back-logged brews in fine Sunday evening would be a great idea.  No matter how wring they were I ask you not to judge because from it came a torrent of magnificent knowledge regarding just how wonderful and utterly terrible some beers can be.  Remember folks, just because it’s a micro-brewed beer doesn’t mean it’s worthy of consumption.  And with that I will deliver unto you our ale appraisers and lager lappers.

 

I suppose the first thing that should be accomplished is a small introduction regarding what to expect from this journal.  The most general objective of this journal is to provide the reader with a deeper understanding of that which we call beer (to include lagers, ales, barley wines, malt liquors, and whatever else happens to cross my tongue).  I am a member of the Malt of the Month Club[1] thanks to a gift from my mother this Christmas.  From that I receive 4 different kinds of domestic micro-brewed beer every 2 months.  They give me all kinds of information regarding the brewery and the beer itself.  I'll be sampling these beers and giving my honest opinion regarding several notable factors of each beer.  I'll try to post once every week, so if you do the math I'll have to supplement some posts with domestic beers and other flotsam.

Like all other review blogs out there, I'm going to attempt to conduct myself scientifically, but end up about as non-scientific as humanly possible.  I'll try to sample each beer with a meal, then by itself, then maybe I'll funnel it up my ass to see how that is.  Hell, I don't know what I'm going to do yet, but its beer, I'll figure it out.  Anyone wanting to know more about beer should visit How Beer Works[2] and Wikipedia's Beer entry[3].

[1] http://www.beermonthclub.com/
[2] http://home.howstuffworks.com/beer.htm
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer

Next edition:  Our first review...Brooklyn Brewery's 'Brooklyn Brown Ale' The beer is a lie.