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Okay, but where in Vermont? No, all of Vermont. The latest Brewers Association stats put Vermont at the head of the list–the state with the most breweries per capita–and all of them are craft breweries.

Vermont is not a huge state–slightly more than 600,000 souls call it home, and there are more senators in the U.S. Congress than the lone congressman. A head to foot (or vice versa) traversal is doable in about two and a half hours, and one is never too far away from the next good beer or golf course.

It all began in Burlington when the late, great Greg Noonan (author of the iconic Brewing Lager Beer) and his wife, Nancy, fought to change the laws to allow brewpubs to operate in the state. The Vermont Pub & Brewery opened in 1988, and is still going strong in the state’s largest city–at under 40,000 people.

Vermont golf rarely gets its due because the season is pretty much over by November. (The less hardy say a month earlier.) But when the hills are green, there’s hardly a more beautiful place to play. Just a few pairings:

The Brattleboro Country Club is a lively curtain-raiser for visitors from the south, and a brisk introduction to the rolling elevation found throughout a state where an uneven stance is more rule than exception. In town the prize-winning McNeill’s Brewery can make the rough places plain, and always has a few hand pumps running.

Ray McNeill at the 2010 Brattleboro Brewers Festival

The Long Trail Brewing Co. in Bridgewater has surpassed the 20-year mark, making it a microbrewery venerable. It’s Double Bag is a 7.2% ABV double Alt doubly notable for its heifer-related label (a cartoon of two bovines viewed from the rear, displaying, well, their bags). And a few miles away the Woodstock Country Club is something of a microcosm of the state–packing large scale complexity into a compact plot:

“On paper the course looks easy,” says long-time pro Jim Gunnare. “It’s only 6,052 yards from the blue tees, it has six par-3s, and plays to par-70. But when you come to the fifth hole already seven-over, you begin to realize it’s a very hard golf course. It’s tough because it’s narrow. The greens are small. And if you play the course perfectly you’re only going to cross Kedron Brook twelve times.”

Tenth hole at the Stowe Mountain Golf Club

The Alchemist Pub & Brewery is a great stop in Waterbury*, and just up the road is the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream factory, a stop almost required by law in Vermont. Just a bit further on into Stowe one can try the fare at the new Brewery at Trapp Family Lodge or old favorite The Shed Restaurant & Brewery**. The tee time will be at the challenging Stowe Mountain Golf Club, a newish Bob Cupp design aptly named, with splendidly elevated views.

# # #

This piece first appeared, in somewhat different form, in the Spring, 2011 issue of The Beer Connoisseur.

*And, alas, since the story first appeared, the flooding from Hurricane Irene devastated parts of  Vermont, including the Alchemist Pub & Brewery. As an operating brewpub, it is no more. But as a production brewery, it still exists in a separate facility, now canning a double IPA called Heady Topper. Click here for a related story.

**The Shed lost its lease and sadly closed its doors last fall. But the brand is currently still being brewed by Otter Creek.

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When in Pennsylvania, drink Keystone State beers. My friend and MOTO Research Team member Prentiss Smith was afraid there wouldn’t be any suitable brews on hand for me when we arrived Friday night for the opening bash in the weekend festivities celebrating the marriage of his son, Prentiss Smith Jr., to Lauren Katz, so he went out and somehow managed to score a miscellaneous six-pack of local beers. This was no easy task, considering the state’s bizarre laws, which usually require buying beer a case at a time.

The rehearsal dinner was as sumptuous a gala as many weddings themselves, a Mexican-themed evening at the home of the bride-to-be’s parents, Connie and Sam Katz in the Chestnut Hill section of Philadelphia.

Sam Katz made three unsuccessful runs for Mayor of Philadelphia, each time as a Republican, though he began his political life as a Democrat. He switched parties more to gain a place on the ballot than because his convictions had changed, and the rumor is afloat that he is now contemplating another shot at the post, this time as a registered Democrat. But he gamely refrained from discussing politics during the wedding weekend.

The only hitch in the program was that recent torrential rains had created massive traffic tie-ups, and a bus bringing most of the out-of-town guests from a downtown hotel–normally a short ride–took about an hour and a half, delaying the festivities and the arrival of the prized six-pack. But I dallied pleasantly enough with the Negra Modelo on hand.

Prentiss had chosen wisely, with beers from the Lancaster Brewing Company, Victory, Yards, and Stoudts. With a massive cold, I figured I’d be lucky to taste anything, so I made my choices based on whimsy and bottle art. Who could resist something called Amish Four Grain Pale Ale? The label suggested, perhaps redundantly, that this Lancaster Brewing Company beer was “Brewed Naturally–Without Preservatives.” It said nothing about the use of electricity or distribution of the beer via motor vehicles.

The beer does include oats, rye and malted wheat along with malted barley, comes in at 5.3% ABV, is a deep copper, and I was able to discern a toasty character, and some floral hop aroma thanks to dry-hopping with Saaz hops.

Lancaster was home to our fifteenth and, some say, worst President, James Buchanan. I’m halfway through his biography, as I continue on in my self-assigned Presidential reading project. This one, by Philip S. Klein, is not badly written, but I’m still yearning to get to the next President–it’s been a bit of dry run of late with Taylor, Fillmore, Pierce and Buchanan in numbing sequence.

Perhaps with that in mind, my next choice was one of Yards Brewing Company’s Ales of the Revolution, General Washington’s Tavern Porter. The others in the series are Poor Richard’s Tavern Spruce Ale and Thomas Jefferson’s Tavern Ale, all three said to be based on recipes our founding drinkers used themselves to concoct brews, though whether George, Ben and Tommy did any of the actual brewing themselves is open to historical debate.

The Tavern Porter label claims the General had the recipe brewed, “to satisfy his thirsty field officers,” but there’s no debating that it’s a sturdy dark pleasure, coming in at 7% ABV, with a strong hint of the molasses used in the brewing.

Prentiss Smith Jr. and Lauren Katz, the night before their wedding

We stayed with old friends Will Doak and Andrea Botts, who live appealingly close to Downingtown, home of the Victory Brewing Company. As mentioned in the entry for Victory’s Golden Monkey back at TAP Beer of the Week 10, Will and Andrea are accomplished beer nuts in their own right, so there was no question that we’d be visiting the brewery on Sunday.

It turned out that Victory was sponsoring a fall festival that day right in downtown Downingtown, packing the streets with food and craft booths, and the new Victory Brewpub On Wheels, basically a mammoth rolling beer dispenser. The B.P.O.W. is the subject of the company’s first-ever commercial, and a funny one at that, showing what might happen if the B.P.O.W. made the rounds of the neighborhood like an ice cream truck.

The cast of the commercial is made up of employees or friends of the brewery, including co-founder and owner Bill Covaleski, playing the crucial part of Man w/Suitcase.

Bill was trying to direct some of the human traffic in the streets the day of the festival, and I reintroduced myself as the guy he sat with in the Flat Street Pub one night during the Brattleboro Brewers Festival in May. No need–he even remembered I was drinking Victory Hop Devil that night, an impressive feat of suds recall.

The overflow street crowd had the same idea we did–go over to the brewery and brewpub. So we had to wait a bit for a bite and some beers, but that gave us time to choose our sampler beers from the bulging list available.

Once home, I decided it was time to tackle the V-12 my brother gave me back in January. If the Golden Monkey is a triple, the V-12 is a quadruple or maybe a quintuple. It’s big.

But considering the 12% ABV at bottling (it’s liable to keep climbing as a bottle-conditioned beer), it goes down like the Monkey–all too smoothly, with warmth but little alcoholic burn. There’s a vigorous malt backbone and an energetic play of flavors–spicy, fruity, yeasty. I’m sure I was lucky in that I had help drinking it, but it was disappointing nonetheless when I poured out the last of it.

The label noted I had a March 2, 2009 bottling, with the recommendation that I drink it before five years had elapsed. Done.

Name: V-12
Brewer: Victory Brewing Company, Downingtown, PA
Style: Belgian Quadruple
ABV: 12%
Availability: Year-round, 30 states
For More Information: victorybeer.com

The brewery can be so prolific because it is really two breweries, the original Boston plant that opened in 1987, and the Windsor, Vermont plant it purchased in 2000 from the expired Catamount.

It was a sad day for Vermonters when Catamount went belly-up; it was one of the earliest and best of the New England craft breweries.  Many of us still pine for a Catamount Porter. Harpoon made what seemed like a half-hearted attempt to keep the Catamount name alive for awhile.  But it was a candle in the wind.

Harpoon Riverbend Taps

That said, Harpoon is now into its third decade, making it one of the venerable ancients of the craft brewing world.  With the Windsor plant, locals pretty much consider it a Vermont brewery now, particularly with the Harpoon Riverbend Taps and Beer Garden on hand, adding a brewpub-like menu and atmosphere onto a brewery visit.

Harpoon is our penultimate featured brewer leading up to the May 22 Brattleboro Brewers Festival.  It will certainly be pouring the flagship beer, Harpoon IPA, a real go-to selection that often saves the day (or night) whenever other beer choices are limited (a slot once likely to be reserved for Sam Adams Boston Lager).  It’s a solid Cascade hop-accented IPA, not too far over the top, easy to find and a pleasure to drink.

But why stop there with so much choice?  Harpoon’s other beers fall into a variety of categories–UFOs (Unfiltered Offerings), seasonals, and two limited edition series, the Leviathans and the 100-Barrel beers.

I’ve been dipping into each category, a little promiscuous myself.  The UFO Pale Ale has been available since September and is about to vanish, more’s the pity, but it shall return.

The Leviathan series is self-evidently about big beers, all upwards of 9% ABV, in 12-ounce bottle four packs.  The Imperial IPA comes in at 10% ABV and reaches 122 IBUs with its massive Amarillo, Chinook, Centennial and Simcoe hopping.  Wisely, the company has made this a year-round offering.

The Big Bohemian Pilsner is just out and will probably be poured at the Festival.  It’s a tasty beer, with a grassy nose, a pleasing hops and malt blend, a bit metallic and harsh on the palette, with a lingering sweetness giving way to alcoholic warmth.

It’s hard to know exactly what Harpoon was aiming at here–or, for that matter, any brewer putting out an Imperial Pilsner, something of an ersatz style.  The beer is strong enough for an Eisbock, and reminiscent of a strong golden Belgian ale.  But it’s a lager, of course, loaded as a Bohemian Pilsner should be with Czech Saaz hops.  But the hops are less evident than the viscous malt profile.  Tasty, as I say, but puzzling in the same sense as a remake of a classic movie–why go to all the trouble?

On the other hand, going to the trouble seems the key to the 100-Barrel Series, wherein every couple of months Harpoon gives its brewers a free hand to dream up, develop and brew a 100 barrels-worth creation.  The brewer’s signature is on the label, the beer lasts as long as it lasts, and then it’s on to the next one.

The program began in May 2003 with an Oatmeal Stout that lasted three months, and has since plowed through some mighty interesting beers on its way to the 31st iteration, not that I’ve had them all: I’ve learned, once I see one, not to wait until my next trip to the store to buy it; it may well no longer be there.  Mighty sorry I missed Session 29, a Ginger Wheat.

But I did enjoy Session 30, the Island Creek Oyster Stout.  Dry stouts are classic accompaniments to oysters, which is certainly the idea behind the Oyster Stout from Marston’s in England, the only one I believe I’d ever had up until now.  There are no oysters in Marston’s Oyster Stout; it’s less an ingredient and more a suggestion.  (There was no question in the oyster shooter I once had–which was a raw oyster floating in a glass of Guinness.)

But in Katie Tame’s Harpoon version, several hundred Duxbury Bay oysters from the Island Creek Oysters farm were shucked and added right to the brewpot. Katie’s theory was that oysters would add some protein to the beer and hence a bit more head retention. Other brewers on the bandwagon have been throwing in whole shells or just the shells, which would probably assist in fining. No one seems to be mentioning the potential aphrodisiacal qualities of the style.

Oysters

But the beers are now surfacing everywhere.  From New Jersey, Massachusetts, North Carolina and Oregon, respectively, come Flying Fish Exit 1 Bayshore Oyster Stout, Fisherman’s Oyster Stout, Moonestone Stout and Upright Oyster Stout.  (Well, maybe the latter is a stimulative comment.)

From further afield in Toronto, England, Ireland and New Zealand come Patrick’s Oyster Stout, Gadds’ Black Pearl Oyster Stout, Porterhouse Oyster Stout and Three Boys Oyster Stout.  Presumably these are only some of the oyster stouts in the brewing seas, and I’ve even heard of one mussel stout from Australia.

Mussels I like.  I’ll slide a raw oyster down now and again, but I’m no great fan.  Depends how much nerve is mustered at the moment for gulping down a grayish, wet, phlegmatic blob. The odds improve if I have a stout in hand.

The combined packaging of Harpoon’s offering requires no nerve whatsoever.  It’s a pleasing stout with a toasty brown head indeed, opaque in the glass, with a roasted malt, coffee and chocolate nose and flavor, though hardly overpowering in any way.  There’s an unmistakable mineral note that one is naturally tempted to call briny.  So I’ll call it briny.  But in truth, the oysters in most oyster stouts are virtually undetectable.

The 31st 100-Barrel entry is the Single Hop ESB brewed by Charlie Cummings, and in its own way as adventurous as an oyster stout, since the hop is Delta, never before used in a commercial beer according to Harpoon.  A new strain from Hopsteiner, Delta is said to be a cross between Fuggle and Cascade.

My guess is that the Fuggle qualities dominate, since the aroma is more woody and piney than citrusy.  The aroma hops are backed up by a firm malt character, but the initial flavor impression is of a sharp hop bite.

The beer tended to thin out when I first served it, too chilled.  Letting this one warm up a few degrees decidedly brings the beer to greater life, releasing more aromatics and malt character.   Still, it’s not a beer that will knock anyone over, and would probably serve well as a flavorful refresher on a warm day, not that we’ve had too many of those in Vermont of late.

Anyone reading this before May 12 can go to the Harpoon website at noon (EDT) to hear some live chat about the beer with the brewer and Michael Sutton of Hopsteiner.  Otherwise, just drink the beer, while there’s still time.

Name: Harpoon 100-Barrel Island Creek Oyster Stout, Single Hop ESB
Brewer: Harpoon Brewery; Boston, Massachusetts; Windsor, Vermont
Style: Oyster Stout, ESB
ABV: 5.5%, 5.8%
Availability: Stout since February, ESB since April, until they run out, in about 25 states
For More Information: harpoonbrewery.com

They’re largely content to stand on the cider’s virtue’s alone, and ciders will definitely have a presence at the May 22 Brattleboro Brewers Fest–Farnum Hill of New Hampshire and J.K. Scrumpy from Michigan are scheduled to appear, and as our tenth featured company leading up to the day, Woodchuck, the largest selling U.S. cider maker.

The Vermont cidery started out humbly enough in 1991 in Proctorville, with Greg Failing, creator of the original recipe, topping off bottles by hand with a turkey baster. The current Middlebury plant is now a major player in the beverage world, turkey basters long ago replaced. But not replaced has been Failing, who remains the cider maker to this day. He began his fermentable life as a winemaker in upstate New York but began making apple wines in Vermont in 1986.

Five years later, Failing’s recipe for Woodchuck Amber Cider hit the market. (For those not in the know, a Woodchuck is slang for a native Vermonter, versus carpetbaggers like myself, known as Flatlanders.) Another Failing blend, Dark & Dry, is now known as 802, for Vermont’s area code.

The 802 was shipped off to the Great American Beer Festival in 1994, and judges couldn’t figure out where to place it into any of the regular beer categories. But in those earlier days of GABF there was a popular vote People’s Choice Award, and the Dark & Dry brought that trophy home to Vermont, beating every beer at the festival.

Cider doesn’t beat beer for me; I’m not a big fan for two simple reasons–they’re generally too sweet for my palate, and as long as I’m drinking something I’d just as soon have a beer, thanks.

Sampling three Woodchuck products this week, I found the flagship brand, Woodchuck Amber, does little to sway me for just that reason–too sweet for me. But the Granny Smith offering is a dryer, and therefore more palatable blend that many a beer (or wine) drinker could probably cozy up to.

Of the three I most enjoyed the limited release Summer Cider, with a bit more tartness to balance the sweet, and that agreeable “hint of blueberry” promised on the packaging. My wife actually thought the flavor was closer to peaches and pears than blueberries, but it’s ripe and juicy fruit either way.

The aroma and flavor actually reminded me of hard candy bon-bons, the kind with a soft fruity center, which I happen to like. And I liked this, too.

Name: Woodchuck Draft Ciders
Brewer: Green Mountain Beverage, Middlebury, Vermont
Style: Hard Cider
ABV: 5%
Availability: Year-round plus seasonals, nationwide (Hawaii excepted)
For More Information: woodchuck.com

Courtesy of DK Publishing

Dogfish Head founder Sam Calagione will not likely be at the Brattleboro Brewers Festival on May 22, although you never know; he’s originally from Greenfield, Massachusetts, just down the road a piece, and returned to these parts to pick up some maple syrup for the collaborative brew with Sierra Nevada, Life and Limb, which was our TAP Beer of the Week 2.

I then referred to Dogfish Head as the east coast star of innovative brewing, and it wouldn’t be far wrong to call Calagione the rock star of craft brewing, such has been his impact and influence on the industry. It all begins with the willingness to throw just about anything into a brewpot–the company motto, after all, is “Off-Centered Ales for Off-Centered People”–and to ultimately pull it off.

But Calagione has more than a touch of the showman about him, and he also has the good looks, humor and intelligence to come off well under the klieg lights. He has modeled Levi jeans, written three books, given countless talks, been profiled by The New Yorker, and most recently gamely played a robot in a short film by actor/musician Will Oldham that played at the Dogfish Off-Centered Film Festival in April.

Last June the paperback version of He Said Beer, She Said Wine (DK Publishing, $16.95) appeared, the result of a battle that began in 2003 at the Dogfish Brewing & Eats brewpub in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. In one corner, wearing the beer trunks, was Calagione. In the opposite corner, robed in the wine togs, was Marnie Old, the founding education chair of the American Sommelier Association and head of her own wine consulting firm, Old Wines.

The two experts had long battled privately if good-naturedly at trade shows about which beverage was better, and which paired better with food. They finally decided they had to take it public, in a competitive tasting that matched a wine and a beer with each of five courses and letting the audience vote on which went better with the dish on hand. The evening was called, “Beer is from Mars, Wine is from Venus,” and both combatants came out swinging, no verbal holds barred.

The debate, now between covers, is every bit as entertaining, and informative, as Sam and Marnie are in person at the various tastings they’ve continued to do through the years.

At the first beer versus wine event, as in all subsequent events, there were surprises in store. Beer campers discovered that wine wasn’t so bad after all. Wine aficionados admitted that beer was sometimes the better pairing with a dish. And after scores of such tastings, the authors report that the results of many votes taken are a virtual dead heat. Some nights beer might win, barely. Other nights wine gets the nod, barely.

Uncorking the Past by Patrick E. McGovern (University of California Press)

Maybe this shouldn’t be so surprising after all. Both beverages share the glory of antiquity, wine dating from about 5000 BC and beer reaching back further to 7000 BC. Both are blessed miracles of agriculture and the happy confluence of grape or grain with yeast. The end products are almost primal foods. So even playing field there.

The real debate is getting past one’s personal prejudices, and seeing behind images. As Old relates in the book, “[B]oth wine and beer can be mass-produced, sacrificing quality in favor of quantity. What I hadn’t realized before was that because cheap beer is so much popular than cheap wine, I had dismissed beer based on that alone.”

From my vantage point, there’s always been a blind spot for beer in this country for that very reason–people see no further past the image of beer than as a cheap glass of yellow suds too often drunk in quantities leading to largely questionable behavior. Such a stereotype overlooks beer’s history and breadth–the wide variety, flavors and complexity that beer easily encompasses.

On the flip side, Calagione said he learned that one needn’t spend $20 or more for a good bottle of wine. He’ll still maintain that some of the finest beers in the world are less expensive than most good wines, although that virtue of beer is also sometimes viewed condescendingly by those too heavily invested in the cultural mythology (or collectibility) of wine.

The best part of this debate is that it’s ongoing, one is free to dive in anytime, and taste a lot of fine beer, wine and food in the process.

As for antiquity, Calagione has attempted to recreate a variety of ancient beer recipes in collaboration with Patrick McGovern, an archaeological researcher at the University of Pennsylvania who has literally written the book on the subject. Their efforts have led to Midas Touch, Chateau Jiahu, Theobroma and Chicha.

In the kaleidoscope of Dogfish brews, the Indian Brown Ale is almost a sleeper, relatively straightforward. But only relative to the rest of Calagione’s restless catalog.

He calls the beer a hybrid of ale styles– Scotch, IPA, American Brown–and certainly the beer has the malty character of a Scotch Ale, the hoppiness of an IPA, and the strength of an American Brown. It pours out an appealing mahogany with a rocky tan head. The organic caramelized brown sugar used in the brewing give off the beer’s dark toffee aroma. This follows through in the flavor, along with a mild roasted character and a hint of chocolate.

It’s a mouthful. I’m not getting much of the Goldings or Liberty hops in the nose, but there’s plenty in the finish, perhaps because the beer is dry-hopped like Dogfish’s 60 Minute and 90 Minute IPAs.

The Indian Brown Ale seems to fly a bit under the radar of Dogfish Head’s normally busy air traffic. It’s probably the least talked about of any of the company’s beers. But I have a sneaking suspicion it may be one of its best.

Name: Indian Brown Ale
Brewer: Dogfish Head, Milton, Delaware
Style: Brown ale, of sorts
ABV: 7.2%
Availability: Year-round, in about 25 states
For More Information: dogfish.com

Smuttynose has a bit livelier aura, reportedly where Blackbeard honeymooned, and certainly where two women were killed in 1873 in a notorious case that has spawned a number of books. One, a novel by Anita Shreve titled The Weight of Water, was made into a Sean Penn movie in 2000, directed by Kathryn Bigelow. Bigelow won the Academy Award as Best Director this year for “The Hurt Locker.”

Poster for "The Weight of Water"

Okay, now that we’re up to speed on the cultural bases, let’s get to work on Smuttynose the brewery, which will be pouring both these beers at the May 22 Brattleboro Brewers Festival, along with the Dirty Blonde Ale from its sister company, the Portsmouth Brewery.

Actually, to trace the Smuttynose family tree, one should start with the Northampton Brewery in Massachusetts, opened by brother and sister Peter and Janet Egelston in 1987, making it New England’s oldest operating brewpub. The Portsmouth Brewery was New Hampshire’s first brewpub, opening in 1991. And after buying the assets of the defunct Frank Jones Brewing Co., the Egelstons launched Smuttynose early in 1994. (The pair have since split the assets, Janet running Northampton, Peter the New Hampshire properties with his partner Joanne Francis.)

Portsmouth has made big news the last few years (well, in the World According to Beer, anyway), when it releases its Russian Imperial Stout, Kate the Great. With only 900 or so bottles available on one day of the year, beer fans begin lining up outside the brewery in the middle of the night, like golfers camping out to snag a tee time at Bethpage Black. Once the brewery doors swing open, the available beer is quickly claimed.

Head Brewer Tod Mott of the Portsmouth Brewery in the air, with general manager Brennen Rumble and owner Peter Egelston, center

It was only last year that Smuttynose surpassed the brewpub in gross sales for the first time, and growth has been such that a new brewing facility and restaurant is being build in Newmarket, about 20 minutes from Portsmouth. (The Portsmouth Brewery isn’t going anywhere.)

As for the beers, the best part of the Star Island Single, especially considering the reverent aspects of the island, is its label, showing a mermaid with a pile of crimson hair contemplating a shell-encrusted mug of, presumably, Star Island Single. The mermaid is a woman Egelston and Francis ran into in a consignment shop in San Diego, where they were attending a brewers conference. Francis asked her if she would model for the label. Miss Dixie von Trixie was happy to do it, since when not working in the consignment shop she struts her stuff as a model and burlesque performer.

The aroma of the beer is quite fruity, with little detectable hop scent. It’s probably just the beer’s name that suggests the flavor of star fruit, or carambola, but that’s the best I’ve got.

The Single in the title, not to mention some Belgian yeast, suggests the abbey-style leanings of the beer, while the bottle description of a “Session ale brewed with spice,” suggests a beer you can settle in with and have a few of.

I don’t think that will happening any too soon on my part. It’s a bit too sweet for me, and otherwise strikes me as thin, though the finish is mildly puckering, which may be where the coriander spice comes in. I’m not detecting anything particularly Belgian about it, which would help. Love the label, though.

Happily, my reaction to the Smuttynose IPA is almost exactly the reverse. I could see downing a few of these at regular intervals. But then I’m a hophead, and this is a hop festival in a bottle. The aroma is citrusy, although a bit less grapefruity than Cascade hops. (The mix here is Simcoe and the fairly obscure Santiams.)

There’s a nice woody bite to the beer, a pleasing malt sweetness and a bracing hop finish. It’s not a complicated beer, but it’s solid.

Good label here, too, showing two geezers sitting on lawn chairs in front of what looks like a trailer park home. They’re both holding beer bottles and having a good laugh. I’m not sure what this represents, exactly, since it seems far more likely a pair like this would be drinking something like Old Milwaukee Light than Smuttynose IPA.

Maybe someone put some of the IPA in their hands and they’re laughing at how great it tastes? If so, wouldn’t that soon trigger crying in one’s beer, thinking about all those years carrying the weight of bellywash?

Name: Smuttynose IPA, Star Island Single
Brewer: Smuttynose Brewing Co., Portsmouth, New Hampshire
Style: IPA, Belgian abbey-style spiced single
ABV: 6.9%, 5.3%
Availability: Both year-round on the east coast, west to Ohio
For More Information: smuttynose.com

True, it’s an ale made in the Belgian style by a brewery now owned by Belgians, but it blends well in the small town that houses the greatest sports hall of fame of them all, of America’s greatest sport.

Yes, Brooklyn Brewery’s Pennant Ale might have done pretty well, too–the large B of the Brooklyn Brewery logo was designed by Milton Glasser with the old Brooklyn Dodger B in mind. But we spotlighted Brooklyn two weeks ago, as we continue our series pondering the breweries that will be pouring May 22 at the Brattleboro Brewers Festival. The Ommegang Abbey Ale is our sixth of an eventual dozen.

For that matter, something like Coors Light might have been apt, too, if one is nostalgic for genuine old ballpark swill. Back in the good old days, when the Dodgers, Giants and Yankees were all in New York, each had their own beer sponsor. I remember them as Schaefer for the Bums, Knickerbocker for the Giants, and Ballantine for the Yanks. In the Mets early days, it was Rheingold. The Dodgers and Giants are long gone from New York, of course, and so are the beers, at least in their original incarnations.

They all had one thing in common–they were pale, bland, gassy lagers, served in big wax cups and probably warm by the time they were conveyed back to one’s seat. They always seemed vaguely sour to me, and there was usually something floating in them–stray peanut shells and skins, flakes of drifting cigar ash. On a hot summer day, enough of them could induce a real stupor by the late innings, probably the inspiration for the seventh-inning stretch.

I actually tried just such an experiment on opening day back in 1997. My nephew Jim had brought some Coors Light here for Thanksgiving or some such holiday, and it continued conditioning, untouched, in the garage, passing through close to ten different calendar seasons in that time. Since the Silver Bullet is not meant for such conditioning, it was in perfect swill shape. I poured it in a plastic cup and opened a few peanuts over it before settling down to watch the game.

Coors Light is the lightest of light beers. It’s been around since 1978, and is bewilderingly one of the most popular beers in American. The light certainly refers to the taste profile–there really isn’t any as far as I can tell, unless it’s two years old and funky. But for those watching waistlines there’s really nothing particular light about the Silver Bullet at roughly 105 calories per can at a 4.2% ABV.

So the excitement from the evening came not from my ersatz ballpark atmosphere, but because it was the 50th anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s first regular season major league game, being celebrated at Shea Stadium during a Dodgers-Mets game.

I could go on at extended length about my connections to Jackie Robinson, but let this suffice: He’s always been a part of my life, from my early days as a pip-squeak Brooklyn Dodger fan, watching him play at Ebbets Field, to more recent years, when I did some editing work on Stealing Home, Sharon Robinson’s memoir about growing up in the wake of her father’s career and fame. The Robinson story has always struck me as a profile in courage and pathos, and it doesn’t take much more than looking at his Hall of Fame plaque, along with that of his teammate and champion Pee Wee Reese in Cooperstown, to choke me up.

The entire 1997 season was dedicated to Robinson, and all the players that night were wearing uniforms with Jackie’s old number 42. Following remarks from then-President Bill Clinton and Robinson’s widow, Rachel, baseball commissioner Bud Selig did something right for a change; he announced that Jackie Robinson’s number 42 would be henceforth retired from all of baseball–the only player so honored in the long history of the game, and fittingly so. It was a stunning move, beautiful in its simplicity, guaranteeing that forever after there would be a question from a young fan–”Who was number 42?”–requiring an answer that would keep the legacy alive of the man who, in my book, was about as heroic as they come.

I suppose I digress, but then it’s a digression I’ve been on all my life, from ballpark swill to a devout appreciation for Belgian brewing. So it all seems perfectly apt and congruent to me. I guess it must be to the folks at Ommegang, too, since on June 17 of this year they’ll be hosting what they’re calling a Vintage Base ball Game–two words for baseball as per pre-1900 spelling. Under 1861 rules–no strikes, only the catcher wears a glove–the Cleveland Blues will meet the Fitchburg Rollstones in a contest likely to determine nothing at all. But one anachronism will be the beer on tap, Ommegang.

That’s always good news. The brewery opened in 1997, a partnership between the Belgian brewery Duvel Moortgat and Don Feinberg and Wendy Littlefield, the couple who ran the American beer importing firm Vanberg and DeWulf. Much credit is due the partners for broadening the appreciation for Belgian ales in the U.S., not to mention building a beautiful Belgian farmhouse brewery in what were once important hop fields in Cooperstown.

Brewery Ommegang

Moortgat bought the sole rights in 2003. (Feinberg and Littlefield continue to fruitfully operate Vanberg & DeWulf,though they moved from Cooperstown to Chicago last year.)

Brewery Ommegang has five splendid year-round beers (Rare Vos, Hennepin, Three Philosophers, Witte, and the eponymous Ommegang Abbey Ale). It’s seasonal specialties are always worth looking for (Ommegeddon, Chocolate Indulgence, Adoration, Bière de Mars), such as the BPA, a dry-hopped Belgian-stye Pale Ale that will be poured at the festival.

Then there’s the occasional one-off like the Inauguration Ale 2009. The beer was originally going to be called Obamagang, but the label ran afoul of the feds. A worthy salute nonetheless, and one wonders why the beer wasn’t served at the infamous White House Beer Summit.

Every now and again the brewery carts a few hundred cases of its beers about 45 minutes away, storing the bottle-conditioned brews in the constant 52°F temperature of Howe Caverns for further maturation.

I wouldn’t mind storing a few cases of the Abbey Ale in my garage. This is one delicious beer, ruby in color, with a complex fruity nose and an equally complex palate–toffee sweet but bracingly dry with all sorts of flavors coursing through–raisins, apples, plum, a hint of licorice and spice, with plenty of body and an earthy finish.  Score it a home run all the way, by current or 1861 rules.

Name: Ommegang Abbey Ale
Brewer: Brewery Ommegang, Cooperstown, New York
Style: Belgian-style Dubbel
ABV: 8.5%
Availability: Year-round, 40-plus states
For More Information: ommegang.com

Ray McNeill and cello

Will Ray McNeill play the cello at the May 22 Brattleboro Brewers Festival? With Ray, you never quite know. He’s a classically-trained cellist, but given to wearing t-shirts emblazoned with his motto, “Beer is the reason I get up each afternoon.”

Ray, his pub, his beers, are all indispensable institutions in Brattleboro, Vermont, all trailing colorful histories. The pub is a no nonsense, funky and unpretentious hall usually replete with students and a noisy mixed crowd reveling at long tables or kibitzing by the dart boards. Ray has owned the bar for over 20 years now, from its first incarnation as Three Dollar Dewey’s on South Main Street, to its current location in the old Elliot Street firehouse, which he moved into in the summer of 1990. Brewing began the following year, after Ray did an internship at the late and lamented Vermont micro, Catamount.

In the early years, some of the beers were as wild as Ray’s tied-dyed fashions, since toned down. But the range of beer styles was and remains a hallmark. There are usually about a dozen McNeill recipes on tap, including a few cask-conditioned ales, many of which have won regional, national and international awards, not to mention sweetly scenting the air of the great metropolis of Brattleboro (actually a town of about 12,500), with malt aromas on brewing days.

When the town built a parking garage near the Elliot Street facility it literally cast a long shadow over the brewhouse, cutting off the passive heat and playing havoc with production for a time. Ray solved that by moving the bottled brewing operations into larger facilities out on Route 5, although he said starting that up was a nightmare: “Whatever could go wrong did go wrong.”

McNeill’s bomber bottles were missing from local shelves for a mournfully long time, but all is well once again, and production has increased; McNeill’s fancifully named and labeled beers (including Blonde Bombshell, Dead Horse IPA, Pullman’s Porter, Professor Brewhead’s Brown Ale and my go-to favorite, McNeill’s ESB) can now be found in six states. Sales have recently begun in New York City and according to Ray are going like wildfire, exceeding the combined sales for the beer in the other five states where it’s available.

Ray’s relatively new Warlord, the fifth in our imaginary 12-pack from brewers represented at the festival, will be poured that day, as will a special beer brewed especially for the occasion. “We haven’t started brewing that one yet, but it may well be a pale ale with Amarillo hops for bittering, finishing and dry-hopping.”

The Warlord uses equal parts of Chinook, Cascade and Centennial to balance a rich malt character. Indeed, the beer is sweet, not unlike a barleywine in character, although probably too bitter for that style, Ray said. Indeed, it’s so hoppy that it makes me sneeze every time I initially take a sip. But that assault past, I settle down for the ride, which turns out to be smooth and satisfying. It should pair nicely with a Bach unaccompanied suite for cello.

Name: Warlord
Brewer: McNeill’s Brewery, Brattleboro, Vermont
Style: Imperial IPA
ABV: 8.5%
Availability:  VT, NH, MA, RI, TN (east), NY
For More Information: mcneillsbrewery.com

There are more and more of them, because the world of brewing has become one of wild experimentation, and my tasting was one attempt to satisfy thirsty curiosity.  The Strangebrew part was to cover the angle of beers with stuff in ‘em, be the extra ingredients fruit, herbs, flavors from wood barrel aging, chocolate, maple syrup, whatever, as long as it was no-holds-barred brewing.

Brooklyn Brewery obliged with a new series of Belgian-inspired ales, Local 1 and Local 2, the former a strong pale ale, the latter a strong dark ale.

Though it might sound like the beers are inspired by “On the Waterfront” or the AFL-CIO, the labels make the subway line reference plain.  Whatever the allusion, the beer will get you where you need to go.  And while there’s no underground connecting Vermont and the great borough of Brooklyn, the brewery will be pouring at the Brattleboro Brewers Festival on May 22, filling the fourth slot in our figurative 12-pack.

I polished off a 25-ounce-plus bottle by myself Sunday night while watching the U.S. House thrash it out over health care, which gave me plenty of sipping time.  Still, when the bill finally passed I emptied my glass in a toast, and felt euphoric in all directions.

Though I haven’t seen him in years, I used to thrash it out with Garrett Oliver at homebrew competitions of the nascent New York City Homebrewers Guild.  I may even have bested him once or twice, though I’d have to go into the archives to check.  But whenever my beers did win a ribbon, they were always accompanied by certificates festooned with Garrett’s artful calligraphy.  Talented fellow in many directions, that Oliver, who built on his homebrewer days, going pro at New York’s first brewpub, the Manhattan Brewing Company, before the Brooklyn Brewery wisely took him on and made him brewmaster.

Garrett has since become one of the real celebrities of the craft brewing world, particularly as it pertains to matching beer with food.  His book, The Brewmaster’s Table: Discovering the Pleasures of Real Beer With Real Food (Ecco, 2003) is a tour de force of beer styles, history and flavors.

I did ask him recently if he had a model for Local 2, and not surprisingly he was aiming high, at some classics from the Trappist breweries at Achel (the Extra Brune) and Chimay (the Grand Reserve, but the Grand Reserve circa 1988).

Local 2 is a worthy tribute indeed, and it’s lucky that the beer is part of Brooklyn’s year-round portfolio.  It’s made with German Pilsner and English Chocolate malts, Perle, Aurora and East Kent Golding hops.  Some raw wildflower honey from a New York farm, sweet orange peel and Belgian dark candi sugar are the extra stuff, along with a Belgian yeast strain.

The effect is a rich and filling beer, deep garnet with a light tan head, a sweet and fruity nose with complex raisin or prune notes. The flavor is sweet but dry, with a touch of zesty spice, and a nice puckering finish.  Definitely a beer to bring to the table–where Garrett suggests it will pair well with duck, ham, mushrooms.

It goes pretty well with wacky politics, too, helping to make that gumbo a lot more palatable.

Name: Brooklyn Local 2
Brewer: Brooklyn Brewery, New York
Style: Belgian Strong Dark Ale
ABV: 9%
Availability: Year-round, 25 states
For More Information: brooklynbrewery.com

This, our third beer in a 12-pack aimed at previewing the brewers at the May 22 festival, comes from the North Coast Brewing Company in Fort Bragg, California, which began brewing in 1988 and has just been solidifying its reputation year after year, beer after beer–from its Red Seal Ale, Old No. 38 Stout, Brother Thelonius Abbey-style Ale, to its Acme series of session beers, or two beers definitely slated to be poured at the Festival, the Scrimshaw Pilsner and the Le Merle Belgian-style Farmhouse Ale.

Its Old Stock Ale, a 12.5% ABV behemoth of a beer, is more notable for its smoothness than its strength, and I think the same of Old Rasputin, which is an extremely drinkable beer for a style that could be hard to handle.

I use the latter term advisedly. Reportedly poisoned, shot, clubbed, castrated and finally drowned in 1916, that Russian enigma Gregori Rasputin was said to have had a behemoth of a member, which may or may not have been discovered by a maid cleaning up after the grisly assassination. The, uh, item found its way to a group of female Russian expatriates in France, who worshipped it as a fertility object, until it was claimed by Rasputin’s daughter, Maria, who died in Los Angeles in 1977. After that the object d’art was sold at auction, and the owner had it sent for analysis, wherein it was determined to be a sea cucumber.

The story doesn’t stop there. In 2004 a museum of erotica opened in St. Petersburg, Russia, claiming to have the pickled remains of Rasputin’s 12-inch penis in a jar. (I won’t include a photo, but the curious can link to one here.)

Now that I’ve slipped down this dubious avenue, I might as well talk about Catherine the Great and her penchant for copulating with horses, which, goes one persistent legend, is what killed her, when the harness contraption she used to accomplish this amatory feat broke and she was crushed by the horse.

None of this is true, although Catherine did appear to have a voracious sexual appetite for males of her own species. She also had quite an appetite for Russian Imperial Stouts, so named because stouts brewed in England for the Imperial Court had to be made to higher gravity and alcohol levels to withstand the journey in the early 1800s, and so the style has come down to us today. I’ll go into the history of it in more detail if–at grave risk of further double entendre–I ever get my hands on some A. Le Coq’s Imperial Extra Double Stout.

Back on American soil, North Coast’s founder and head brewer Mark Ruedrich commenced operations eleven years after Maria Rasputin died, and brewed his first batch of Old Rasputin in 1996. The last few years he has released small anniversary batches of the beer aged up to a year in bourbon barrels, available only at the brewery.

This year, Old Rasputin XII, the aging ratcheting the ABV up to 11.2%, is making the rounds in somewhat wider circulation. Those who find this beer should not drink it, but immediately send it to me for safekeeping.

It’s easier to find the regular bottled version and here, too, great contentment should ensue. The beer pours out with a frothy tan head that would make Starbucks envious.  It’s loaded with chocolate and coffee aromas, some roasty notes and bready yeast.  It’s a rich mouthful, sweet, even luscious, but nicely balanced by the hops.  Mostly, it’s smooth, and goes down real easy.  Nothing like the actual Rasputin.

Name: Old Rasputin Russian Imperial Stout
Brewer: North Coast Brewing Co., Fort Bragg, California
Style: Russian Imperial Stout
ABV: 9%
Availability: Year-round, nationwide (except for AK, WV, RI).
For More Information: northcoastbrewing.com

Ron (left) and Bill

The brewery has been operating since 1996, although the genesis goes way back to when co-founders and owners Ron Barchet and Bill Covaleski met on a school bus in fifth grade. They’ve had a good ride ever since.

That Golden Monkey did not crack the top ten in the recent New York Times tasting of Belgian-style golden ales (some actually from Belgium) suggests two things to me. One is that the category is awfully broad. The second is that there are a lot of tasty Belgian-style golden ales out there.

It seems obvious that the model for Golden Monkey is Duvel, a beer which the late Michael Jackson dubbed a world classic, although it, too, failed to crack the NYT panel’s top ten. (What’s wrong with them?)

Both beers are indeed golden, looking for all the world like unexcitingly tame pale lagers. Both are ales, both are anything but unexciting, redolent of spices and fruit, particularly pear notes. They’re peppery and effervescent on the tongue, refreshing and delicious, and both will cut a drinker off at the knees if not mindful of their hidden wallop. One 12-ounce bottle is enough to begin working some magic. If I had a Duvel on hand I would taste the two side by side for purposes of research. Then I would take a nap.

Soldiering on with just Golden Monkey is not a hardship. Victory calls Golden Monkey a tripel, perhaps because of the spices it adds, or perhaps, as Will Doak, my man on the ground in Pennsylvania puts it, to make a play on the monk in monkey:

“I think the flag for Golden Monkey, inside the pub, says something about enlightenment. But after a few Golden Monkeys, I’d be your man on the floor.”

Will, who lives ten minutes from it, reports that, “Business at Victory’s renovated brewpub is booming. It’s hard to find a parking place.” If lucky enough to find a space and get inside, “It’s hard to hear your wife, even in your good ear.”

His wife, Andrea Botts, is also a beer nut, making Will lucky in love. “Andrea went through a long phase of drinking Golden Monkey, but has moved on; she’s now quite a fan of Victory’s Fest.”

There’s certainly plenty to move on to. Victory probably cycles through 30 different beer styles in a year’s time, though some are available only at the brewpub in Downingtown. But along with typical year-round beers like HopDevil, Hop Wallop, Prima Pils, Storm King Stout, are seasonal and specials that take no prisoners.

Among those birthday bottles my brother picked out for me were Victory’s WildDevil and V-Twelve. The latter is a Belgian-style strong ale that tops 12% ABV, and which I haven’t had yet since I don’t dare drink it alone. The WildDevil is the company’s HopDevil fermented with a Brettanomyces yeast strain (one strain for the draft version, three strains for the bottled version). Here it seems obvious that the model is Orval, a Belgian Trappist classic. And again, the homage seems righteous.

Name:  Golden Monkey
Brewer: Victory Brewing Company, Downington, Pennsylvania
Style: Belgian-style Golden Ale or Triple
ABV: 9.5%
Availability: Year-round, 30 states
For More Information: victorybeer.com

Brattleboro is a vibrant southern Vermont town, well-known for lively weekends like the Strolling of the Heifers in early June and the Brattleboro Literary Festival in early October. So while this is the first beer festival in town, it will surely not be the last. (Actually, an all-organic beer festival may be in the works for later this year.)

Brattleboro is a great beer town, with one brewpub/microbrewery in town, another pub with scores of taps, and any number of restaurants, nightspots and retailers with good selections.

I’ll fill in more details as we go on each week up until May 22. Though the festival spotlight will obviously shine on Vermont and New England beers (some being brewed specifically for the event), selections are coming from all over the nation and abroad, and I’ll try to keep my picks geographically diverse.

That said, I’ve already covered some of the breweries that will be present, both in past TAP Beer of the Week entries (Sierra Nevada and the Huyghe Brewery) and in the piece on Rock Art’s lively Vermonster.

This week’s pick comes from the Allagash Brewing Company in Portland, Maine. Whether the company will pour the Black remains to be seen, but it hardly matters: Allagash is one of the most adventurous breweries on the east coast, and since its first release in 1995 has yet to market a beer that isn’t at least worth trying. Usually they’re worth hunting down, fighting over and hoarding if necessary.

At base is founder Rob Tod’s love for traditional Belgian beers–which are traditionally all over the stylistic map. So from cellared and barrel-aged beers, brews made with grapes, sweet potatoes, pepper and exotic spicing, bottles corked with the méthode champenoise, and beers fermented with multiple yeasts, including a proprietary Brettanomyces stain, Allagash continues exploring ways to head right over the boundaries.

The Black is a pretty good example of this, since a Belgian-style stout is an anomaly to begin with. It’s possible to find stouts in Belgium, but they’re usually not Belgian. Sure, there are a few–Ellezelloise Hercules Stout, Buffalo Stout, Troubadour Obscura–not that I’ve ever tracked these down.

But a stout is just an ale, after all, with roasted malts giving the beer its signature chocolate and coffee aromas. The Black, which pours out as opaque as advertised, fulfills expectations with a full-bodied aroma.

Then the Allagash fun begins, adding German barley to the pot, oats, torrified wheat, Belgian dark candi (a caramelized sugar), along with the house Belgian yeast strain.

The end result is a sturdy but highly quaffable beer, creamy and toasty sweet, but with a nice roast edge and all sorts of flavors swirling through the finish. It’s not only a tasty beer, but an intriguing one as well. It raises questions, as well as one’s spirits. The main question being: Where do I find the version of the Black aged in bourbon barrels?

Name: Allagash Black
Brewer: Allagash Brewing Company, Portland, Maine
Style: Stout
ABV: 7.5%
Availability: Year-round, 25 states
For More Information: allagash.com

Tim and Amy Brady hold the tastings every Saturday evening in the cozy pub of their 12-guest B&B, where they usually have two beers on tap and others in bottles.  Since most guests are from out of town, the couple rightly emphasizes Vermont beers, but they’re more concerned with serving up seven different styles for a one-hour crash course in beer diversity.

Amy and Tim Brady

The thirty-something young couple left their professional lives in New Jersey to take over the B&B at the end of 2007, and they’re energetic converts to and boosters of the charms of southern Vermont.  But they’re also beer nuts and evangelists for the best in the brewing arts.  They’ll travel just about anywhere to try an unfamiliar brew, and then they’ll post a video about it at their blogsite, Here for the Beer.  (I wound up in one, “Tim and Tom Talk Trappist,” a riveting essay on monastic ales.)

They’re also key players in the first Brattleboro Brewers Festival, which will roll into town in late May, with two evening pub crawls on Friday and Saturday nights, May 21 and 22, the festival itself playing out from 1 to 5 pm on Saturday.

There were ten of us for the tasting this past Saturday, four couples staying at the B&B–three from Massachusetts just visiting for a getaway, and one from New Jersey, newlyweds as of the previous evening.

We started off with a hefe-weizen  and rolled right through to an oatmeal stout, five Vermont beers, two German, a nice trip. I’d had all the beers before, but hadn’t sampled the Pinkus in a long time.  It was a pleasant reacquaintance.

There are a few novelties surrounding the beer.  The brewery, founded in 1816, is the only one of 150 breweries left in Munster, still family-run to the sixth generation.  It was the first to go all-organic, beginning in 1980, and is one of the few with a female brewmaster, Barbara Müller, at the helm.

And you don’t see an unfiltered pilsner every day, either, since cloudy beers still give some drinkers the willies.  But it may be the beer’s visual resemblance to a hefe-weizen that lends a zesty quality to the brew, not to mention the snap of the Tettnanger hops.  There’s a surprisingly fruity nose to the beer, redolent of apricots, and the overall impression is of a sturdy, filling and yet refreshing beer, suitable for any tankard.

Name: Pinkus Organic Ur Pils
Brewer: Pinkus-Müller Brewery, Munster, Germany
Style: Pilsner
ABV: 5.2%
Availability: Year-round, in all but five states (AL, MS, NH, SD, WY)
For More Information: merchantduvin.com

Tim talks beer at Forty Putney Road