founder's cherise

OK so in addition to a beer rating I am going to plug the restaurant that I had the beer at because, this is a seasonal beer that has little time left until next summer. So go find it is what I'm saying and to start you off you can get it at uncommon ground in rogers park.

First the beer; Cherise is a cherry ale, now it is not a lambic. However, it has more cherry than most beers can pull off. The thing that makes it work is it's absolute dedication to cherry. Fresh Michigan cherries are added to the brew at five separate stages. Every angle of this beer is loaded with cherry. Now some of you are already running away. Understand, this tastes of cherry, not of Cherry syrup, or extract, likes fresh Michigan cherries. They are tart cherries so the beer has a very crisp tang to it, it is rather dry no sugary flavors at all. It is somewhat lacking (not a detriment just a fact) in malt character, and a classic beerness if I may. Low in hops low in malt although enough malt to give good feel, but the real flavor is cherry. It does have a very dry cider type quality to it, although unquestionably beer not cider. Mild carbonation not fizzy like soda, but effervescent due to it's general lightness. Which reminds me the color is gorgeous, a beautiful strawberry blond, a great golden base with bright pink hues, and a nice white foamy head.

This is a summer beer it will only be available during this month before it is packed up until may next year. So rush out to find it. This beer makes me want to sit in a hammock. I think it is really special due to it's dry flavor and potent tart cherry it serves well very cold. Most beer really need some time out of the fridge to get to about 50 to serve, this beer can come straight from the ice bath to your mouth at 38 and be great. That is what I want in a summer beer something I can drink to cool off. Another nice thing about this beer is the clean flavor allows you to keep drinking them. You don't get burnt out by a sweetened cherry sauce thing. Makes me want to lay in a field with a picnic lunch a beautiful girl, and a cold sixer of cherise. (which is sold in four packs)

Finally kudos to Founders for using cherries from Michigan where they are. Support local agriculture support local economies and reduce carbon foot print with local produce shipping. Sustainability delivered in delicious delicious beer form. I give this beer a 8.5 acres out of ten. And as I said before it can be found at a local restaurant here in Chicago called uncommon ground which always a small but well thought out beer list and lots of good foods often featuring local meat and produce, or flowers from the edible flower garden on the roof. How cool! Also they have some great cocktails I loved my david cassidy coffee after dinner.mmmm So there is a real brief about the local joint you can find cherise at, and I recommend you do asap.

Goodnight mon cherie
Mr. President

Mikkeller Beer Geek breakfast

MIkkeller beer geek breakfast has the ability to go on the other side of the green glass door which is cool to start with. aside from it's repeated repeating letters. It is a really nice stout that strays far from the "darkest meanest bad assiest stout around syndrome." It remains a super complex stout. Oh yeah it is a rich dark full stout. It isn't a raspberry stout that gets all fruity, but in addition to dark roast malt there is so much well thought out flavor profile in this. Also, Norway is the country of origin which is pretty cool, (sidebar: I've seen a bunch of Norwegian beers popping up lately has some law changed to facilitate this? is microbrewing exploding in Norway? any answers would be great.) also there is a picture on the side of the bottle that looks like Alfred Jarry and that makes me happy since besides saison yeast, and fries jarry is the only thing i like about France.

Ok, this beer has to start with how pretty it looks and smells. the head on this black beer is a great dark Carmel color with phenomenal retention.(pour carefully even a dedicated head fan like me got pretty tall foam on this and had to take it easy.) it looks so warm and cozy you relax just getting ready to quaff. and the aroma is like a diner, not just coffee a whole diner coffee, toast a waitress named francine who is pretty heavy and yet you still have a crush on her. That is all in this scent it is pretty cool. the thing i found amazing was how sweet it smelled prior to drinking and oddly when i drank some the smell seemed to be disticntly more coffee-y and less malty.

Enough preliminaries let's drink it. For the smell it is surprisingly low on sweetness. mildly bitter but very easy to handle in that respect, somewhat dry but not astringent or with out malty sweetness. the oatmeal of course rounds out the mouth feel, which is slightly betrayed by the high carbonation levels. The carbonation is something i would change, but it is neither unusually high levels, just high for a stout, nor is it a detriment beyond repair, I just disagree with it. I really enjoyed the seemingly large divide among flavors, both very bright bitter notes, and very earthy and full notes, with little in between it makes for a striking flavor that is truly balanced. a rather spectacular beer all in all.

the biggest problem, is the price, it is an eleven dollar pint at my local shop. is it worth is yes, but can you find equally or nearly as good for half or less in price? yes, yes you can. the Norwegian beers all seem to have a high price. I Wonder if there is some atf law that taxes the Norwegian product higher, or what. but , it seems to be the way things work. So, "economic times being what they are" if you don't want to cough eleven up for anything short of amazing I'd stay away, but if you got a twelve dollar bill burning a whole in your pocket and want a new and complex stout try beer geek breakfast it is a reasonable price considering the truly high quality stout being offered.

beer for breakfast once again,

\Mr, President.

mamma mia pizza beer

The lowest common denominator.

Ok, who likes pizza raise your hands. Alright, who likes beer put the other hand up. Anyone who doesn't have two hands raised is most likely dead or unable to digest enjoyable foodstuffs. beer is great we all know that, it is proof that god loves us and wants us to be happy (B. Franklin)

And pizza is the universal food. If you intend to feed twelve people you know little about you order pizza, when you reward children you throw a pizza party. Pizza and beer are both almost without exception enjoyed by all people. Tom Seefurth has as such provided us the next logical conclusion pizza beer. That's right it is beer that is seasoned like a hot slice of 'za.

This is my least favorite of culinary inspiration plans. This thing is pretty good, this other thing is pretty good too. How's about I stick um together. Don't do it! I love peanut butter, and I really like a good cup of coffee, I'll never mix them. But, based on the soaring sales of Reese's peanut butter cup (which i love) people have been mixing favorites for centuries in an attempt to find the next big winner. A couple summers ago I saw a "grapple", that is an apple flavored like a grape in case you were unclear. Why is this necessary? What situation can you conceivably find yourself in and think good i want a grape and an apple. but i just don't have time to eat both. It is just a grossly unneeded product. What about Goober Grape???? whose plan was that monstrosity. Or and I know I'm gonna piss some people off here black and tans. I like Guinness, I like Harp, but i can order one drink it and still have room for a second. Irish men slaved over hot kettles to make these beers let's just enjoy them not, muck about because we know more about them. Excuse my digression. Which begs the question. why not eat a slice and order a beer?

To be fair mamma mia is not a bad beer on a strictly run scale. medium bodied, nice golden color, and a nice middle ground on hops, not gonna catch the eye of a stranger but a solid beer to keep in the fridge. Until you realize that after beer you taste oregano, basil, garlic, and smell without question tomato. It honestly left me feeling annoyed i wasn't chewing. the tomato is the most present flavor followed by oregano then malt. This beer really tastes like you just dropped a hunk of pizza in it by accident, threw the bit on the floor and drank down the brew anyway. Which is exactly what i would do. But to make that item on purpose baffles me. Really that is the crux of the problem. The beer is ok as a beer and tastes like they make a decent pizza. but why make this at all. And i mean go ahead and make it once, but base a company on it? it is not as though these beers are an experiment by a big company, they are the only beer produced by the pizza beer company. I just don't understand. I imagine the invention came when an individual was lying on a carpet in his BVD's too high to walk for more food. He then in a moment of desperation found a slice of four day old pizza under the couch. when finding the pizza too hard to eat he dunked it in some flat Heineken just to eat it easier, after a few nights of this. while sobriety still fumbles but the brain has turned back on. this fat and drunk man thinks yes I'll make "pizza flavored beer" and it will be great.

hardly worth rating because this beer is about drinking something not available elsewhere. not making a good beer. Pushed to it I'll give it a 4 out of ten mario carts. I know your going to buy it now out of curiosity for the product. but, I warn you, have pizza nearby since more than anything else you'll wish you were eating pizza.

cowabunga dudes,

Mr. President

Unibroue Blanche De Chambly

The sublime from the ridiculous.

I once made a friend who had consumed several of the beers we made back at my old arts studio, try a Unibroue "la fin du monde" to which he said "this tastes like a house of payne beer" (that's my old studio in case you ain't figured it out.) Ever since the unibroue team has had a special place in my heart. In addition they appreciate head as much as me. they have a lovely little blurb on their site about the need to pour out some froth. In addition, they seem to me more like the best home brew team ever as opposed to a craft brewery. they seem to crank out these insane high booze beers just to do it, they know beer and make good stuff but don't take it too seriously, and don't make a joke out of it to seem like they don't take it too seriously. these guys are in my top three faves. (dogfish head and bell's are the other two, but the list is dynamic)

Blanche De Chambly, is a very grown up beer for this company, and done beautifully. Everyone does a white beer, everyone makes it way to wheaty, or far to sweet or worst of all way to Orange. (when i made my first we called it the Orange monster, so I'm sympathetic.) It almost seems like these guys who make beer with no particular styles in mind decided to show off their abilities just where so many were struggling. this white is a great balance not too fruity a bit yeasty, and lovely champagne texture to the mouthfeel.

White beer is a Belgian tradition that uses orange peel and coriander in the brew. it produces a light beer usually, with a fruity nose and fruit flavors, but balanced with a spicy malt character so as not to be to sweet. (god the Belgian's rule don't they.) Finally to be more traditional many modern brewers use bottle fermentation on their white beers. It is a summer beer because of the peel. which is why the unmalted wheat often is part of the grain bouquet, and why it is often likened to or commingled (in a way i disapprove of) with American wheats.

Blanche De Chambly does a lovely job of bringing out the orange flavor in the nose and finish but keeping the spicy flavors and summer wheats up front in the beer. It has a very fine yeast silt to it providing a nice cloud and a mouthfeel. The feel is also complimented by the somewhat high carbonation, giving it a very light and refreshing feel like a fine mist on a hot day.

Unibroue has many enjoyable beers, but none so well planned and fine as this, in the world of north american white beers, (the beer style i think we really fail at as well) this is really a great beer. very stylistically true, very enjoyable, and very well balanced.

white is the new beer

dan

sour gum?

look a little like college to anyone else?

A friend recently sent me a message about a sorghum based beer. If you have one of a small number of diseases, or just prefer then gluten is a dietary no no. as such beer can be real trouble. (terrible I know but keep reading there is hope.) wheat, malt, and barley all have gluten. (actually so does sorghum, but a different kind. think the difference between herpes most of us have that cause canker sores if you get symptoms. or herpes for real open wounds on special parts). Anyways, there are several beers out right now that are made with sorghum to cater to the glutenless crowd. this is actually a tradition not a new fad. sorghum is used as a filler, but is a real crop just like wheat and is popular Africa. so there are some traditional African beer recipes that use only sorghum. sprechter has made a beer that is sorghum based and is marketed as a traditional African fire brewed style. lakefront, old st Peter's, and green(which has three) all have some gluten free sorghum recipes available. There are many others but these are all beers i know available in Chicago. also, red bridge is out there, but it's made by busch sooooo. i hope to do a sampling of a few soon and post some results. thanks a lot to my former stage manager for pointing out the need for review of this product.

Bear Republic Big Bear Black Stout

Now all I need is a bottle of golidlocks!

Bears have always seemed to me like they might make good pets. Am I alone on this. I know what your thinking they can eat you whole. Sure, sure, but a cat can eat a mouse whole too and i no plenty of well fed cats that do no mouse hunting. Besides that my huskies could have killed me and they didn't. Bears are so playful and expressive I bet they could be domesticated in three generations. What are we here for again? oh right beer.

Ok, here's the deal with stout. I love stout, I have made stout and been drinking stout my entire drinking career. I drink stout all year round, and nothing is a better beer on a rainy day. But, the craft brewing world has gone down a road with stout that has been detrimental to the progress of stouts. Everyone wants to be the darkest, driest, most robust manliest stout around. this has yielded a number of really yummy beers but, the variety can get a bit weak. and don't get me started on how to counter act it there is the rush to throw fruit in the stout. I think Bear Republic fell into this pit. "Big Bear Black" OK, we get it, it's tough. It's a big rough and tumble man's bear and you can't handle it if you like high heels. (I own two pairs). do we need to call a stout black. Is anyone making an amber stout or a blue stout?? Enough Beating them up many of the craft brewers out there and all the home brewers (myself included) think the can reinvent the wheel by loading the black patent malt on. A stout that really mixes it up by the way is left hand's milk stout. I think the milk is about a lactic fermentation, which Guinness also does.

to give them there due this is a fine choice for the ultra dark stout. If it was local to me I would drink it with regularity. it is of course black and completely opaque. a bit low on head but a nice Carmel color. This probably results from a low carbonation, which works for the dryness of the beer. Pretty high in the hop register, which compliments the bitter of the burnt grain character but to me it seems like another attempt to be the toughest beer around which doesn't impress. it does have a really nice tingle on the tongue. It just breaks the magic 8% booze level, which is part of the tingle and general warmness of the beer. But, since it just beats it at 8.1 % it is not a booze flavored beer like the super high content stouts (dogfish head world wide... ahem) It has a sweetness in the fore front, but it gets wiped out by the bitter notes. The finish is so dark malt it remains with you for several seconds potently.

In truth it is a fine beer but, there are plenty similar beers available, so when you want the darkest stout around grad the one made locally and be good to the earth. but, if you live near healdsburg cloverdale California. go nuts for the big bear.

say it once say it loud my beers black and I'm proud.

Dan

lagunitas 2009 correction ale.

"We're all bozos on this bus!" exclaims the bottle in reference to the economic downturn that inspired this brew. How true, how true, preach it brothers of the alter of brewery in Petaluma, California. It's 2009, yes the country is in collective financial funk the likes we haven't seen since before disco was a new idea, yes we are fighting at least two wars with less money to fight them, yes we successfully pissed off most of the world over the last eight years, and yes the motorcycle I bought recently thinking I made a killer shrewd purchase won't actually move anymore. We all played apart in the above. Bozos indeed! But there is hope, Obama baby, plus NPR stories keep convincing me we as a people are still everybody's pal they just don't like our recent political decisions, (me neither and I like us a lot) lagunitas gave us 2009 correction ale to weather the rest of the storm, and we have sour cherry pie (at least I do thanks to our good friends over at Museumist.com).

This beer is conceptually a cure for the hangover from the gravy train party of economic irresponsibility that was the past decade. I'll give it high marks for the attempt. A working mans beer, this brew makes aims at truly lavish flavors or textures but still delivers a well thought out and enjoyable range of sensory stimulus. The color of this beer is a robust honey, slightly red, and high in clarity. That is worth noting since it is such a juxtaposition to the hops that are not just present but, brimming from the glass. I forgot to wash my glass and in the morning hops were growing out of it kind of hops. The hops are greatly present in taste and odor, but they also carry a very fresh flavor to them keeping the bitterness more complex then overpowering. As far as curing a hangover i always recommend a beer with a high hop it makes you feel cleaner, I don't know if it applies financial hangovers too, but I'll give these guys credit after two I felt much better about my portfolio.

Beyond the hops there is a subtle sweetness. The mild carbonation brings out the sweet flavors very subtle vanilla and melon flavors. They come together as a balance to the hops more than anything this beer is not in any way fruity nor is it for the sweet beer lover. But, if you like a hoppy beer and want some true high hop flavors but want to avoid the medicinal grapefruit rind flavor some true IPAs get 2009 is an excellent choice. Sold in the big bottle at 6.33 % booze it is a nice respectable amount of drunkability, but won't leave you questioning the name of the girl your talking to at the bar. And the blurb on the bottle about this beer is rather enjoyable. it also reminded me to buy toothpaste which is cool. all in all I don't think that it can bring on economic recovery for the world at large but, while waiting for the government bail out of part time beer bloggers I'll feel better with one in my hand. I'm not sure if Lagunitas is publicly traded or not but, I'm going to invest by simply buying a crate of their beer!

Never invest while drinking cheap beer,

Dan