One of the places I see a lot of flavor experimenting being done is in beers that taste like desserts. The two main styles I see this happening in is stouts & sours. The time that I most want to have a beer to savor is after I eat dinner and a baked good or candy inspired beer hits just right in those circumstances. I'll share some of the tastiest dessert beers I've had!

Pastry & Other Sweet Stouts
Pasty stouts have been kicking around for a while but I've definitely seen an uptick in people making sweet dessert style stouts in the last ~12 months or so. The rich coffee and chocolate flavors of the roasted malts in a stout have always lent themselves well to rich beers for savoring, and I have loved seeing brewers really lean into it. The chocolate flavors go especially well with red berry flavors like strawberry, cherry and raspberry. One of the best beers I've ever had is a beer that my closest local brewery Bikedog made called Stout & Raspy. It is an imperial stout with raspberries and lactose. It is pure, rich, chocolate and sweet berry flavor. It reminds me a lot of the little cherry cordial candies that my dad eats every Christmas. You can go for marshmallow and s'more flavors, coconut for a mounds/almond joy style, or spices like vanilla and cinnamon to make it taste like a chocolate babka.

Cobbler, Pie, & Midwestern Salad Sours
Fruit sours are well trod ground at this point, so keeping them new and fresh is key. The light, grain forward wheat base of lots of sours makes it a natural fit for a light pie crust or graham cracker crust. You'll see breweries add fruit, like key lime, or cherry and then add lactose and pie spices like cinnamon and nutmeg. If executed correctly, it will taste exactly like a slice of peach pie a la mode, with the ice cream sweetness coming from some added lactose. You'll see these usually modeled after cobblers or pies. I tend to like the apple or peach pie ones the best, but you'll see berry and key lime not infrequently. Cheesecake sours are also increasingly popular. The mild tartness of a sour that's been fruited can nicely mimic the flavor of cream cheese, so it's a natural fit. One special novelty I had was one modeled after midwestern grocery store deli counter staple: Ambrosia salad. Energy City Brewing from Batavia IL has this Bistro series that's all inspired by pastries and desserts that are consistent knockouts. I got their beers from Tavour if you're not local to Batavia, IL.

I would like to take a moment to specifically call out one other brewer making incredible dessert beers and that's Mountains Walking Brewery from Bozeman, Montana. They've immediately shot to the top of my list of beers I always add to my box whenever I see them come up on Tavour. Absolute must try. They also have some of the most beautiful can art in the game. The sweets series is can't miss for me.

That's some of my favorite treats in one of my favorite popular trends. Do you like dessert beers? Do they satisfy your sweet tooth or are they just too much? Let me know what your favorite dessert beer is on twitter or untappd. I'd love to hear about it. 🍻k love you, byeeeeee

A couple fairly recent beer trends have recently converged to give us smoothie sours. For a while now we've seen milkshake IPAs. These are IPAs that use lactose aka milk sugar to add mild sweetness to beers. This paired with fruit flavors gives things like strawberry milk shake IPAs, like this this one at Prairie in 2018:

The second trend is fruited sours. Like milkshake IPAs these have been kicking around for a few years. Slam as many pounds of raspberries or blueberries into your beer as possible creating a sweet, tart, clean drinking kettle sour or wild ale.

In retrospect it seems inevitable that these two would meet somewhere, and meet they did at Smoothie Sours. Since fruited sours aren't purely sweet, reusing the milkshake name didn't make a ton of sense, but smoothie seemed like a natural fit. Tart from real fruit and sour base, creamy and sweet from the lactose. That tang plus mild milk sweet is very much like the yogurt base of a fruit smoothie. On paper this sounds like it should 100% be up my alley. Unfortunately there is one more feature of smoothie sours that I absolutely can't get down with: pulp.

In order to differentiate smoothie sours from other fruited sours, brewers have done more than just add lactose. They have decided to fully mimic the smoothie drinking experience and left the fruit pulp in the can. Fruit purees are added after brewing and solids are not filtered out before canning.

At this point I would like to admit that I hate pulp. I hate citrus juice with pulp. I hate drinking real life smoothies. I hate the pulp in a smoothie sour. Sometimes my husband will let me taste one of his cocktails using fresh squeezed juice that hasn't been filtered and it is immediately repulsive.

I have had probably over a dozen smoothie sours that I've ordered from Tavour. I tried to like them, I really did. I did however get tired of dumping a half a beer down the drain because I didn't want to continue drinking pulp after the 6th beer or so.  All smoothie sours will instruct you to gently roll the can to redistribute the solids through the beer. Here's what I've decided after months though. If you, like me, don't like pulp, DO NOT ROLL THAT CAN.

Here's the easiest pulp free smoothie sour experience: get out a pint glass, and jostle, shake or roll the cold can as little as possible. We want to pour the delicious clear fruited sour off the top, leaving as much pulp in the bottom of the can as possible. You should be able to easily see when the beer goes from clear to cloudy as you pour off the top. This will probably be 12-14oz of your 16oz tall boy can. You may feel like you're wasting beer, and I am very sympathetic. If you, like me, have failed to finish a smoothie sour in the past, I urge you to taste what is remaining in the can and honestly ask yourself if you want to drink not only the remaining ~2 -4oz of beer, but you want to drink a full 16oz of that. If your answer, like mine, is honestly no, you don't want to drink that, dump the last 2-4oz. If you put it in your glass, the whole beer will get warm in your hand as you dread every sip. I promise you 12oz of beer you like drinking is better than 8oz of beer you choked down because you didn't want to waste 4oz, and you end up dumping the other half of your beer down the drain.

I have tried previously to use a fine mesh strainer or a spoon to skim off the pulp and it worked to varying levels of success. I encourage you to experiment with pulp removal techniques if you find your tolerance for pulp is higher or lower than mine

I hope this gives you permission to enjoy smoothie sours however you like best. I think it can be easy to fall into a trap of optimal efficiency at the expense of personal enjoyment and we should fight that! Especially in things that are supposed to be pleasurable like drinking a delicious craft beer!

Are you also a strictly no pulp person or are you a pulp freak? Do you like smoothie sours? Have you found a way you like to drink them? Let me know! I'm @jennegatron on twitter & on untappd

🍻,
Jenna

I had quite a few expectations coming into 2020 & unsurprisingly few were met. One of the mundane things that has surprised me, though, is the growing importance of an online presence for brewers. I see this manifest in 2 ways.

Social media & web presence
Since bars, restaurants & taprooms are risky and unsafe places to be, it's increasingly important to provide people with the ability to drink at home. I moved to Sacramento from a smaller NorCal town early this year and have easy access to even more breweries than ever. Following my new neighborhood brewers on Instagram has been great. Their Instagram stories especially are great for knowing when new beers will drop, if they're running any deals, or when to be ready to put together a pick up order.

It's been so nice, especially because so many local places have gotten growler/crowler fills up and running. I live a short bike ride from 2 cool local breweries and have been able to pick up some tasty fresh beers from all over town. I've also seen some tiny breweries do deliveries, and have benefited from their online order & scheduling setup. Having a crowler or a couple four packs of tall boys dropped off at your house is truly luxurious.

Other breweries have branched out & allow for shipping beers, both within the state as well as some cross state lines! This gives more people access to tasty beers than even before the 'roni. This is extremely exciting as a person who has favorite breweries from previous places I've lived but that do not distribute to NorCal. Getting access to those non-local beers is made easier by...

Tavor
Historically it has been very difficult to get beer that is not distributed to stores near you. You have to be willing to travel to get it, or find someone where it is distributed and coordinate a trade/transfer/exchange of dubious legality. Getting beer outside of distribution chains was hard for 2 reasons.

1. It's cumbersome to handle packing & shipping for most small craft brewers and
2. State liquor laws are complicated and interstate commerce is hard because of those liquor laws.

Enter stage left: Tavour
Tavour is an app I learned about this spring because one of my Untappd friends was attributing the source of his beers to Tavour. I then got an ad/promotion and I decided to download it to give it a shot. Tavour is a curated feed of beers (or blind box style subscription) where you are able to purchase and receive beers you otherwise wouldn't have access to. Brewers allocate some of their production to Tavour, who will sell pack & ship those beers to their app users. It's allowed me to try beers from very popular brewers that I just would never have had access to, like Evil Twin out of NYC, one of their beers is pictured in my banner, but it also helps me get a sense of what people are making in other parts of the country. Without my weekly trip to the bar & pizza place for trivia or to the liquor store to pick up a 6 pack, i'm extremely isolated, and have no way of knowing what's happening in brewing. I have a follow up to beer trends 2019 planned, and it was much harder to know what people were making without Tavour! I have gotten 4 boxes at this point. I am extremely picky so I have stuck to assembling my own boxes rather than allowing them to pick for me, but have gotten some true stars out of it. I hesitate to recommend it because it is easy for it to get expensive fast, but it is fun if you, like me, were spending too much money on beer before even being confined to your home.

Who are your favorite local brewers you're picking up from? Have you tried Tavour? What did you think? Do you want to try it? I have a referral code if you want $10 off your first order. Like I mentioned above, I'm working on a 2020 follow up to my 2019 trends post. I want to talk about what you're seeing, and what you think you will or hope to see in 2021! Please, come talk to me @jennegatron on twitter.

My husband Cory & I were lucky enough to have the opportunity to go to Germany for a friend's wedding at the end of September. The wedding was in Koblenz but we extended the trip by a few days and took the train up to Berlin. If you know me you'll know German beer styles are among my favorites, I also took many years of German, so I was very excited to go back. We took this chance to visit a couple really cool places!

I have a twitter & untappd beer friend that traveled to Berlin for work a bunch and had fantastic recommendations on places to check out! Thank you Sam! We only had a day and a half in Berlin and unfortunately not all of that could be spent drinking beer, though I definitely thought about it. We couldn't get to everything he recommended but we did get to try 1 cool local bar & 2 global taprooms chains that have Berlin locations. First up:

Protokoll
A beautiful cozy beer bar in Berlin. Excellent tap choices and flattering lighting. There were lots of Russian and German craft brewers on the menu which I don't normally get any access to! I had a delightful Raspberry Imperial Gose called Trafaret from Zagovor from Moscow. It was absolutely delicious. I am usually skeptical of imperial beers because the boozy punch isn't something I like, but because goses are normally so low ABV, so even doubling it added a little kick without overwhelming it.

I also had Wall of Bureaucracy which is a blackberry Berliner Weiss from People Like Us, out of Denmark. Absolute banger. Berry sours are 100% my love. My husband, mother in law and her boyfriend all joined me and had their own delicious choices.

Brewdog Berlin
The next day the 4 of us stopped by Brewdog Berlin. I was on a one woman crusade to try as many beers in Berlin as possible and my dear companions obliged me. Brewdog is a UK based brewery that has taprooms all over the world. In addition to their own beers they had an entire panel of the menu dedicated to regional beers as well. I got a flight and the bartenderes seemed pretty miffed by having to pour them, but luckily the beer was good.

We sat and shared beers until my MIL & her boyfriend had to leave for the airport. Cory & I didn't fly out till the next day so we stuck around and tried everything on the menu that appealed to us.  After we exhausted the Brewdog menu, I noticed there was a Mikkeller within walking distance.

Mikkeller
Similar to Brewdog, Mikkeller is a Danish brewery with taprooms around the world. Mikkeller doesn't tend to make the styles of beer I like on the whole (I've been to Mikkeller San Franscisco before and had some of their beers in cans at home.) They do however make an incredible Berliner series called "Hallo, Ich bin" where they add all kinds of wild fruit like gooseberrys, so I was hopeful they'd have some fun German beers. I always love spending time in taprooms and beer bars with my husband on vacation no matter what. The selection this time was pretty underwhelming so we didn't stick around for long.

There were so many other recommendations and things I want to try in Berlin, so we are sure to plan a return trip as 2 days isn't enough to even scratch the surface. If you have great beer recommedations for things we should hit in Berlin or any other city, please let me know @jennegatron!

Sometimes I try new things faster than my local grocery store brings in new product, so I decided to do a little DIY thing for trying new things and decided we should make some beer cocktails. My husband Cory and I picked a Saturday night and decided to make some! I tried to pick things that had alchoholic components that we already had in the house. In this case we found things that used Kahlúa & bourbon because we already had those in our bar. I got the rest from the store the day of. I got 1 half gallon of lemonade, 1 6 pack of Sierra Nevada's Summer Fest, 1 small bottle of cold brew espresso, a single tallboy of Blackthorn cider, and 1 4 pack of Guinness tall boy cans.

1. Snakebites:

Snakebites can be made with lots of different kinds of beer & cider combination, but the fundamental formula is the same. A ratio of 1:1 beer to cider. I picked up a pack of the 2019 Sierra Nevada Summer Fest (a czech style pilsner) & a single tall boy of Blackthorn cider (a middle of the road, not too sweet, not too dry cider.) Of the drinks we tried, Cory & I were the most ambivalent about this one. It would be fun to experiement with different kinds of beer & cider combinations. This particular combo did not work very well.
Cory's review:⭐⭐⭐
Jenna's review: ⭐⭐ & 1/2

2. Espresso Stouts:

Now I am not a big coffee or stout person, so I did not expect to like these much at all, but I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked this! This is a drink you want to start your night with though, because if you're not careful 3am will roll around and you'll wonder why you're still awake and realize that there was coldbrew espresso in this. The Kahlúa adds some sweetness that really brings out a more mocha/chocolately flavor to this. This is one that I've made again for myself since our beer cocktail night.
Recipe:
1 oz cold brew espresso
1 oz Kahlúa
8oz Gunniess or Stout of your choice
Cory's review: ⭐⭐⭐& 1/2
Jenna's review: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

3. The Beagle

Okay, so I'm the only one that calls them Beagles. These are frequently called half & halfs or black and tans. Unfortunately lots of things are called 'half and half' and though not an association that existed when they were named, but 'black and tan' is now associated with the occupation of Ireland by British military. The origin of the 'black and tan' name however comes from a description of dogs with that color combination in their coat, so I humbly suggest that we call them beagles. 1 because beagles are often times white, tan and black, and 2. because beagles are, I think, the cutest kind of dog. I did not like these very much. It's just like drinking a stout for a while and then you drink a slightly watered down and ale-y stout. We used Gunniess & Summer Fest for these. I don't really like stouts, so I wasn't a fan, but they're very impressive and cool to look at.
Recipe:
Fill half a glass with a pale beer (pale ale, pilsner, pale lager, whatever you like)
Using a wide spoon (we used a rice paddle), very slowly pour the stout over the back of the spoon.
I recommend watching a youtube video on how best to do this! It helps if you pour the ale hard to get a foam head buffer that you can pour the stout ontop of!
Cory's review:⭐⭐⭐& 1/2
Jenna's review: ⭐⭐

4. Boilermakers!

For these, we drank my #1 favorite light beer: PBR Easy: as close to water as a beer can leagally be while still being a beer. There are lots of recipes for boilermakers online. Some of them just pair a shot of bourbon with a pale ale/american lager. Some of them mix them into one glass. We decided to go with separately. We went with sipping the bourbon and leisurely drinking the beer to cut the alcohol bite of the whiskey. We were both of the opinion that neither thing is improved by the presence of the other in this case. It's less a cocktail and more a bar special? I happen to not like bourbon very much so this didn't really have a chance with me.
Cory's review: ⭐⭐& 1/2
Jenna's review: ⭐

5. Shandys!

A classic summer beer cocktail, we made shandys! Very easy & refreshing drinking after a hot day and the lower ABV is a nice way to wind down after trying some much boozier drinks! If you wanted to make radlers instead, just sub lemonade for grapefruit juice! It's an easy thing to keep the ingredients around for at all times, if you like to drink lemonade. I don't like lemonade very much, so this was a hard sell for me, but I knew what I was going to get.
Recipe:
Pick a fairly mild light colored beer! Could be a pale ale, pale lager, summery wheat beer, anything! Use a 1:1 beer to lemonade (or grapefruit juice for a radler) ratio.
Cory's review: ⭐⭐⭐
Jenna's review: ⭐⭐& 1/2

Do you have any beer cocktails you like? We didn't try to do any drop shots, like sake drops or Bailey's drops, both of which I've had before. We didn't do beer backs to bloody marys either. Do you like to mix your beer with cola like the Germans? Let me know what you like on twitter @jennegatron!

I love cheesy macrobrew beer technology. Few things bring me more joy than bottle rifling, cold activated mountains and air venting. Beer technology is almost universally hilarious. Let's talk gimmicks:

Color Change Technology
This is most common in the Coors family of products. Their labels on their aluminum bottles, cans and glass bottles feature those tell tale mountains and bands that let you know your Coors Light is as cold as the Rockies.  This particular piece of 'tech' cracks me up because it give you nothing you couldn't just get by touching the bottle or can. You can tell from the external temperature if the internal liquid is at appropriate drinking temperature. This serves no benefit, it's pure gimmick. I love it.

Rifling
There was a moment in time where Miller included rifling on their glass bottle necks. This was meant to create a 'flavor vortex.' The marketing made it seem that the rifling would cause the liquid to swirl at higher velocity increasing your volume per second consumption while drinking. I assume that this was actually to shoot the flavorless concoction down your gullet with maximum velocity, protecting your taste buds from the ''''beer.'''' A noble effort. I doubt it helped very much.

Vents
I think vents are hilarious. Coors had a campaign where they added 'vents' to the mouths of their cans. The idea is that when more air can get in the can, the beer doesn't 'glug' and you instead get a smooth pour, presumably for chugging. That's all the vents did. They let air in while you were drinking to make it easier to drink faster.

Punch Hole Perforations
The punch hole perforations were a piece of beer tech also by the geniuses at Miller. These were small perforated U shaped indentations on the top of the can. The idea was that you would use a key to punch open this indentation allowing air into the can while you drink. Very similar to the vents, but a call back to older can designs of  yore, before even pull tabs. You may have done something similar with a can of tomato juice. Punch two holes in the top of the can and the pour will be smooth, rather than oscillating between full blast and virtually nothing coming out. I just like the idea that the consumer could use some help identifying where that hole should go, and Miller, generous as always, giving you a guiding outline.

Flavor Seal Liner
Virtually all modern aluminum cans contain a liner that prevents metal from leaching into the contents of the can. This can be seen anywhere from Campbell's Soup to a can of Pepsi. This technology has been around for decades, but the bright minds at the macro brewers have never let that get in the way of a marketing gimmick. Thus was born the flavor seal liner. This layer of protective coating is advertized as 'sealing in the flavor' of the beer. In the case of Coors Light they even made the liner blue so that you really know it's there.

Nitrogen Canisters
Nitro canisters are most easily seen in cans and bottles of Guinness, where they are explicitly called 'widgets'. When poured from a tap, a nitrogen gas mixture is added to the beer, rather than the pure carbon dioxide that carbonates most beers. This results in a beer that is 'smoother' and has less 'bite.' It is why Gunniess has a creamier and less bubbly flavor and mouthfeel. In order to recreate that experience at home, Guiness (and many other brewers that make 'nitro' beers in cans and bottle, a trend that has mostly fallen out of fashion.) includes a small nitrogen canister, similar to what you would use to make whipped cream. These canisters are meant to recreate the 'head' of the beer when poured into a glass. When the can or bottle is opened, the pressure change from the container opening forces the nitrogen gas out of the widget and into the beer, allowing for the mixing to be done at the time of pour, rather than when canning. These beers are meant to be 'poured hard,' meaning you do not tilt the glass to meet the beer to prevent foaming, and you instead pour parallel to the glass and perpendicular to the table, straight up in the air. Once the container is empty, you can even hear the little canister rattle around in the can or bottle. This is not a gimmick and actually makes a difference in how the beer tastes.

To get serious for half a moment, you may notice a trend in beer technology that boils down to 'how can we get our consumer base to taste our beer less and drink it faster, and therefore more of it?' I think that binge drinking is a toxic impulse in our society and because beer is regulated, they have to be subtler than you might expect to encourge people to drink more of their product. They do this by making 'light' beers, and marketing them as beers you can drink more of, describing them as 'less filling,' rather than a low calorie alternative. They also do this via rifling, punch holes, and vents. They have to stop short of shotgun trap doors as they must tell their consumers to 'enjoy responsibly' but I definitely believe if they could sell you a tube and a funnel to make a beer bong with every 30 rack of Busch Light, they absolutely would. Even the cold activated mountains are to let you know when your beer is so cold that you will barely taste it. They know their product is bad, and they depend on volume sales.

Did I miss a piece of beer technology near and dear to your heart that I missed? Are you equally amused by gimmicks? Is there more beer technology with legitimate uses that I missed? Let me know on twitter, where I'm @jennegatron

Today I wanted to talk about a beer style near and dear to my heart: Pilsners. The humble pilsner gets a bad rap, I think, and I want to explore why that is, and what brewers are doing to make it more appealing as a style. I find pilsners come from 5 major beer scenes: traditional German brewing, traditional Czech brewing, other European brewing (the Dutch), North American Macro-brewing and American craft brewing. Popular pilsners distributed nationally and internationally are Miller Lite, Heineken, Beck's and Pilsner Urquell.

The difference in American and European pilsners (Czech, German & other European Pilsners) is largely in hop profile. There are nuances within the European styles, like the very distinct yeast flavor of a Czech Pilsner, but in general Czech Pilsner brewers and some of the German brewers are interested in perfecting their styles. American brewers have one of two motivators: volume and consistency or experiments and extremes. The Dutch brewers, and the biggest German brewers have a similar approach to the American macro brewers: they want to ensure consistent drinking experiences with mass appeal. They want your 1st Miller Lite, Heineken, or Beck's to taste the same as your 100th and the same as everyone else's 100th even if they're separated by years or decades. This search for mass appeal creates a very mild and unremarkable beer, tastewise. The feat of creating the volume they do at consistent quality is impressive in its logistics but not in its beer. I think this is huge in the bad reputation that Pilsners have. People think they're boring because of this.

I think there is a matrix  of American to European, Macro to Craft when it comes to Pilsners. American and European macros have a lot in common, namely: they're boring and mostly bad. They taste different as American Macros are usually adjuncts and fairly sweet whereas European Macros tend to be sold in green bottles, making their skunking the primary flavor. European crafts tend to be very balanced with depth and nuance. American crafts tend to be hop bombs. I want to be clear that in this matrix, you can make a European Craft style Pilsner in the US. This is a plane of style, not of origin.

For American craft/micro brewers, they don't need to worry about millions of barrels tasting the same. This allows for beers that don't try to appeal to mass palates and can instead do more extreme and experimental beers. This is true of all styles, not just Pilsners. It's the place that it's easiest to see though, because they are made by Old World brewers, North American macros as well as craft/micros.

I have to be honest, this post serves 2 functions: 1. letting me celebrate a beloved style 2. letting me bemoan the dry hopping impulses of West Coast brewers.
If you ever want to see what I mean, pick up a Lagunitas Pils, a Miller Lite, and a Pilsner Urquell. It will become immediately clear that these feel like three beers that have more separating them in than in common.

If you have read any of my other posts, you know very well that I don't like hoppy beers, so my frustration with West Coast Pilsners will come as no surprise. Pilsners in the West Coast style tend to be hop dominant. The birth of the American made IPA has awakened a hop hunger in beer drinkers that has spread to almost every other style under the sun. This is felt most acutely by me in Pilsners. I want to pick up a refreshing light summery beer and get a hop dominant palate annihilator. Examples of this style are Lagunitas Pils & Full Sail Pilsner. Look for any Pilsner that talks about being 'dry hopped' or being an 'American' or 'West Coast' style Pilsner if you want to try one.

The style that works best for me are German style Pilsners, which is why it breaks my heart that Beck's is the biggest and most popular of them. It is a bad beer, which is easy to predict if you read my can vs bottle manifesto. It's a green bottle beer that is always skunked and would be flavorless without the skunking. The Warsteiner Gold Pilsner is vastly superior to Beck's. There are lots of American-made Pilsners that are brewed in the German style, like Sudwerk's Northern Pilsner. The best Pilsner I've ever had is Sacramento's Device Pincushion Pilsner. Incredibly drinkable without being bland, infinitely crushable. Note that this is a European craft style pilsner even if it's American made.

Czech Pilsners tend not to be my style because of their distinctive yeast & malt flavor, but I respect the history and style and Pilsner Urquell is hard to beat for an entry into Czech Pilsners. For NorCal local Czech Pilsners, I really enjoyed Volksbier from Red Bus & Folsom Dam Good Pilsner from Fort Rock

Which quadrant does your favorite pilsner fall in? Is it a style you have a lot of experience with? No experience? Total disdain? Do you have suggestions for other beer topics you would like me to cover?  What is your favorite style? Please feel free to chat with me over on twitter, where I'm @jennegatron

Today's post is about one of my favorite beer series: the Anderson Valley Gose series! Anderson Valley is a craft brewer in Booneville, CA. They are recognizable for their Beer logo: Beer being a bear with deer antlers, bear + deer = beer. It's very cute.

Anderson Valley have a whole line of goses that they rotate through seasonally. This list is currently: the base gose 'The Kimmie The Yink and the Holy Gose,' a blood orange version, Briney Melon, a G&T (and a barrel aged version of the G&T), the Framboise Rose gose (Raspberry + rose) and finally Cherry.

This series of beers is only rivaled by Sudwerk's Funhouse series for my must try new beer lists. (I will write about Funhouse later 😉) This series also gives me a great opportunity to dig in a little more in goses as a style!

We covered sours as a family previously and you may remember or otherwise be familiar with goses as a style of sour. Goses are a German style created in Goslar and popularized in Leipzig. They fell out of fashion in Germany before being revived in the 80s. Since this is German style, you pronounce the 'e' at the end, saying "go-za;" it's said more like the famous home run marathon loser Sammy Sosa and less like 'goes.' They made their jump to the US as a style fun for craft brewers to experiment with before exploding in popularity over the past few years. Goses are characterized by their low alcohol content (Alcohol By Volume), tart taste, pale color and salty flavor.

In ~February 2013, the only place I found 'weird' sour beers was in specialty bottle shops like The Ale Jail in St. Paul Minnesota. This is where I first bought my favorite beer of all time: Berliner Style Weisse from Bayerische Brauerei und Gasthaus. This exact beer happens to be a Berliner Weisse, but they are very similar and have had twin trajectories into popularity. My first gose I checked in was in 2014, and was local brewery Sudwerk's Farmers Market Citrus Gose. I didn't join Untappd until 2014 so I don't have a log extending back older than that, but there was only about a 12 month window between when I was taking beer seriously in 2013 and when I joined Untappd. Judging from my check-in history, goses hit velocity in 2016, continuing at a steady clip even now. When I started checking in 2014, large variety wasn't available for another 2 years.

The Kimmie, The Yink and the Holy Gose (KY&H) is the flagship of the series and the first I tried, and the second gose I ever checked-in in early 2015 It was love at first taste, and it was my favorite American made beer until it was dethroned by its own pink daughter Framboise Rose Gose. The KY&H Gose is I think a properly perfect beer, and an absolutely stellar representative for the style. It is crisp, tart, funk free and endlessly drinkable. It has low ABV, but be careful, it will absolutely annihilate your palate for what you drink after. I value variety in my drinking, but it is one of the only beers that I repeatedly pick up more six packs of when I run out.

Next is the lone non-fruit version of the Anderson Valley gose: the G&T. This beer is meant to mimic a Gin & Tonic, which I can see why a gose would be a good beer match for trying to replicate that flavor. You can get very herby to reproduce the juniper, you can get some bite from the sourness instead of an alcohol hit and it is light enough that you can get some serious tonic water vibes from it. This beer also happens to be not at all my style. It has mostly fallen out of canned distribution in my experience and is now sold in a barrel aged variety in big bombers (22oz bottles). It's definitely different that what other people are doing and I admire the ambition even if the execution didn't work for me. It's no longer listed on Anderson Valley's website and is seemingly out of production.

Finally are all the fruit babies in the gose family. I will talk about these in ascending order of my love of them. First, the most recent addition: Cherry! Cherry beer rarely works for me. It's such a powerful flavor that I find most beers can't stand up to it unless you get something very roasty and dark chocolatey. Unlike the others, I won't be picking it up again. Blood Orange is the next; I very much enjoy a citrus beer. The sours especially can pair nicely with the pucker of citrus fruit. I've seen everywhere from blood orange to key lime to grapefruit with varying levels of success. The blood orange gose is totally respectable, if you see it, it's a totally good beer. There's just stiff competition in the Holy Gose family! Briney Melon is our fruit runner up. This beer is properly amazing. If you took a watermelon warhead and turned that into a beer, this would be that beer. It's got the fruity sweetness of the watermelon, with the powerful citric acid like punch of the tartness. I want to drink this beer basically all the time. I unwaveringly recommend this beer to anyone who wants to try a fruited sour.

Finally the crown jewel of the entire Holy Gose family, my favorite American made beer period: Framboise Rose Gose. This beer is incredible. I am a sucker for beer with berries anyway. My favorite fruits in beer are Passionfruit, Guava, Raspberries & Blackberries. The juicy fruitiness of the raspberries allows for a sweet start, the rose hips give the beer a little depth and the tart finish makes you want to take another drink. It's a masterfully crafted beer. It is coming into season right now, so keep your eyes peeled at your local liquor store's craft beer section. It is a cannot miss for me. (Sorry I have no picture of this one, I had clearly enjoyed a few too many and my only photo is rather out of focus. I promise I'll grab one next time I find one out in the wild 😊)

That's all the Anderson Valley goses! Go pick one up and give it a try! They distribute nationally and even internationally. I saw their beer in Amsterdam, so it's very likely you can find a bar or grocery or liquor store near you that carries them. Do you have a favorite beer series that you make sure to snag the new entry of every time you see it? Is it the 'Enjoy By' from Stone? Maybe you have a local brewer that has a kettle sour series like Sudwerk does! Spring is coming up, and that's prime taproom with outdoor seating weather and a perfect opportunity to try the new stuff that will be rolling out!

My favorite way to drink beer is in a cool beer bar or taproom. Having a beer at home or with friends at a party is fine and enjoyable but my ideal beer environment is not a party.

I have mentioned this in previous posts but the most exciting part about beer to me is getting to try new things. Beer bars and taprooms give me the best opportunity to do that.

Beer bars will often offer a variety of pour sizes allowing you to drink smaller volumes of lots of beers. You don't have to commit to full bottles (12 - 22oz) or cans (12 - 16oz) and can instead get smaller 4 - 8oz pours of beers. This gives you enough to taste a bunch of different styles. Bartenders at beer bars often have a passion and familiarity with a wide variety of beers, as well. This lets you ask for recommendations, samples and gives you a person to express your taste to, to help you find something new you might like. The same way a wine bar or vineyard's tasting room would have a sommelier or wine expert, a knowledgeable beer bartender is an invaluable resource.

A good beer bar will usually offer curated flights allowing you to sample a bunch of beers connected by a common theme. These could all be beers from a single brewery or could be examples from a variety of brewers on a single style or family of styles. Sometimes they'll even let you build your own flight, if you're having a hard time deciding on just one beer.

Whenever I travel, going to tap rooms or beer bars is one of my favorite things to do. Even though I live in Northern California now, I'm originally from Rock Island, IL. I went home this last summer and went to one of the coolest beer bars I've ever visited in Davenport, IA. Endless Brews has a beautiful line of taps. The top photo of this post is from Endless Brews and I can't wait to go back to the Quad Cities to visit it again. Our bartender that day was so excited to share the cool things they had on tap and in the bottle shop they maintain on premises. Because the size of distribution radius varies so wildly the only opportunity you'd get to try regional beers is traveling. This was my chance to go back to my hometown (or the next city over in this case) and see what was happening in craft brewing! I've spent very little time in my hometown of drinking age so this was part of a trip that helped me rediscover what my hometown is like now, and what Midwestern craft brewers have been up to.

At New Years 2017 into 2018, we were in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. My biggest 2 highlights from that trip.
1. The Rijksmuseum
2. This tiny beer bar we went to called Het Elfde Gebod

Wandering a city and finding a tiny place tucked away is one of the most gratifying experiences of traveling for me. This could be a cool little record store, or a cafe, but the best of all is a tiny beer bar. A huge surprise at this particular place was finding my favorite American made beer at that time there: Anderson Valley's The Kimmie the Yink and the Holy Gose. There's something that feels exciting and also comforting about being in a new or foreign place or even returning to a place you've lived and seeing what's happening in beer there. At this exact beer bar in Amsterdam I got to introduce my sister in law who is mostly a wine person to sour beers which has made her excited to try beers for the first time.

Even locally The Bank & the Beer Shoppe offer me the opportunity to try things brewers only ever intend to put in kegs. Lots of experimental beers never make it to bottling lines, so I jump at the chance to try something I  can only have access to in a bar. They are also super fun places to take friends when they come visit from out of town.

Taprooms have a lot in common with beer bars. They have the added restriction of serving only that brewery's beer, but have the benefit of having first access to things that will be bottled and canned but also early drafts of beers & experiments that will never be found anywhere else. The first time you visit a given taproom, I highly recommend getting a flight of anything that sounds vaguely interesting! this will give you a cross section of what beers a place makes but also if they have tendencies to repeat certain flavors. Since you're not committing to full 12-20 oz pours, you both won't get drunk nor full before you get to try everything that you're interested in.

Like the beer bartender at a beer bar, taproom bartenders are also an invaluable resource. Their knowledge is going to be much more directed at the making of one particular brewer's beer, but it is super interesting to talk to them. In my case one of my favorite taprooms to go to is Sudwerk Brewery in Davis, CA. Often times the people who run the taps also are trained to do brewery tours, and Sudwerk is no different. I went on a Sudwerk tour a couple years ago and learned a ton. Sudwerk is specifically a German-style Lager brewer. It makes them super different than other northern California breweries. Most places either focus on ales or a combination of the two styles. I will almost certain get into lagering in the future, so I won't get into it here, but lager breweries need a cold storage room to age their beer in while it ferments. Most beer made in the US are American Adjunct Lagers, but most craft beer in the US are ales of one kind or another, for a bunch of reasons but cold storage is a huge contributor. Learning about the history of Sudwerk and why they chose to make lagers, the kinds of facilities they have that are different than ale brewers, and the aging rooms they have made for a super fascinating tour. Finding a local place that has a specific angle to their brewing is a place I would recommend getting a tour of and talking to the staff in.

Where are some of your favorite beer bars and taprooms? Do you visit local ones or do you only go when you travel? Do you have a favorite one you take guests from out of town to when they visit?

One of my favorite things about craft beer is the desire to make new things or rediscover styles that have fallen out of popularity and revive them.

This does however end in some trend chasing. Over the ~7 years I've been drinking and following beer, I've seen ABV escalations, IBU arms races, and dark Porters and Stouts come in and out of fashion. The IPA scene exploded in the early 2010's (and continues to balloon.) You still see every West Coast ale brewer have 3 - 4 of IPAs of some kind on tap. I don't drink IPAs, but I definitely observe surges and declines in styles and love that we now have trends within trends.

One of my favorite parts of beer as a hobby is predicting and observing what things will be popular next.

As I saw NorCal breweries roll out more and more New England/Hazy IPAs, characterized by their unfiltered and cloudy appearance, mid to end of 2017 through the summer of 2018 it was obvious that it was going to be one of the next huge styles in IPAs. Sure enough the biggest boys in craft brewing are getting in on it now, like Sierra Nevada and Laguintas spreading Hazys past the West Coast. Obviously this is a style with its roots in New England, but beer tends to have mini trends that bubble up and then spread across the country. NorCal, where I live, in particular has a dense and rich brew scene, so I often see things before they blow up nationwide. (In this case, while Colorado is not coastal, their robust craft scene means they often work concurrently to CA, OR, & WA) I'm not an IPA drinker, but as a sucker for an unfiltered wheat: I get it. I understand the appeal of a thicker beer. There's an added heft and body to an unfiltered beer. (It's not exactly obvious what gives Hazys their cloudy appearance; yeast likely plays a role though.)

Since Hazy/New England IPAs have hit the big boys, I would not be surprised to see them fall out of fashion this year, ending in us seeing fewer of them than the last couple years. Beer trends in large part are created and led by brewers who want to create contrast with whatever is currently happening. Once the largest craft brewers start making something, smaller micro-brewers are incentivized to pivot into something completely different rather than trying to compete against brewers with vastly higher resource budgets. My money is on the next one being Milkshake IPAs. 2020 look out for Sam Adams's Milkshake IPA in their 12 pack samplers. Luckily for IPA lovers, even if you'll miss Hazys, we have another style on the come up that is just beginning to crest: Bruts!

The same way Hazys developed out of a desire to create something different (juicy and full rather than crisp and bitter), the other new big darling of IPAs has similar origins. Brut IPAs include dry champagne/sparkling wine yeasts in their brewing. These yeasts eat virtually all the remaining sugars out of the IPAs leaving a very crisp, very dry flavor. I can't help but think that this is in response to many of the fruitier IPAs of the last few years. Instead of adding extra sweetness, Bruts are intended to get something very dry. The dryness, like the sweetness, serves as a balance against the extreme hop flavor of an IPA. Since Bruts are just on their come up as far as nationwide distribution goes, keep an eye out for your local ale brewer to try one, or look out for Stone to put out another in their Enjoy By Series. Sierra Nevada has a sixer in rotation right now that's a pretty emblematic entry in the style. I am not an IPA drinker, but I've heard good things about the above Sierra Nevada Brut and great things about the Enjoy By 01.01.2019. I would expect to see Lagunitas and Sam Adams to start putting out a Brut by end of year.

There are usually 3 to 4 trends at a given time, each at various levels of maturity. Usually 1 or 2 of these are in the IPAs and the other 1 - 2 are in lagers and non pale ales. Right now the other big trend won't be a surprise if you've gone to a tap room or beer bar in the last 2 - 3 years: Sours

Sours are everywhere right now, and they broadly fall into 2 categories:
1. Funky Sours
2. Tart sours

Sours are my wheelhouse; allow me to share my bona fides:

Sours are something I try every time I see them offered in a beer bar or taproom, which shouldn't be surprising given that I had 71 unique sours last year! This is just the beers categorized as 'sour' beer styles by Untappd. Here they are if you want to see them all.

Sours, as I mentioned before, largely fall into 2 camps: funky and tart. Let's start with the funk! Funky sours tend to be things like Wild Ales or just generally called 'Sour Ales.' Other beers that have some share characteristics include Geuzes (not to be confused with Goses); some Lambics can get funky. Anything that tastes like your uncle's basement that occasionally floods is a funky sour. There's a musk and a funk in these sours that you only really find here and in just the rankest cheese you can think of (and some other fermented foods that I would rather not think about.) Funk sours, as you can probably gather, given my basement analogy, aren't really for me. The one style that can get in the same ballpark as funky sours are Saisons, which I do like. There's a 'barn' quality that people often pick up on in Saisons that feels like a sibling of the funk that happens here. The creator of these 'unconventional' flavors are the result of non-standard bacteria and yeast strains. Beer making is a strictly controlled chemical system under normal commercial brewing because the introduction of any bacteria or wayward yeast can dramatically change the flavor of the beer, and that is incredibly undesirable. Consistency and predictability is highly valued when you're working at high volume. There's a reason the macro brewers in the US dump more beer than many micro brewers even make in a year! In Wild Ales and other sours, those 'off' flavors are the expected and desired outcome. They will intentionally introduce yeast and bacteria strains that produce very strong sour and funky flavors. I admire and appreciate funky sours in a well rounded beer lineup. Absolute standouts in this genre are Psychokinesis by Grimm Artisan Ales and Horse Tongue by Anderson Valley. (Psychokinesis is one of those beers that made me say 'damn! I didn't know beer could do that!')

The other sour beer I referred to above were tart sours. These are styles like Berliner Weisses, Goses, and Kettle Sours. These are my current favorite kinds of beer. These are German style sours with little to no musty or funk flavors. They tend to be much tarter, similar to citric acid in their pucker worthiness. If you don't personally know my general beverage preferences, you should know that I tend toward candy-like drinks. I love pop, juice and when it comes to non-beer alcohol: the sweeter the better. I like sweet ciders, wine and mixed drinks. I am a big booster and fan of Peach Andre, the bottomest shelf cheap sparkling wine. It tastes exactly like peach rings and I am all about that. My other jams are Pink Moscato, screwdrivers, gin and orange juice, 20th Centuries, and Dirty Shirley Temples, just to give you an idea of my palate. All candy drinks. I promise this connects to tart sours. These styles of sours are not overwhelmingly sweet, but they do remind me of a candy: Warheads. The mega pucker of the coating with the fruit flavored inside tastes exactly like a delicious fruity Gose. Berliner Weisses, Kettle Sours & Goses also introduce non-standard yeasts and bacteria, but are specifically selected to only introduce very tart flavor with no 'off' flavors. My 2 favorite beers of all time are both in this family. I will dedicate whole posts to them in the future, but they are Berliner Style Weisse by Bayerischer Bahnhof Gasthaus & Gosebrauerei and the Framboise Rose Gose by Anderson Valley. Local brewery Sudwerk has a 'Funhouse' series of Kettle Sours they make that have included Apricot, Cherry, Peach, Raspberry, Blueberry + Boysenberry, & Passionfruit + Guava. Whenever they post that a new one is getting tapped I try to make sure to go to The Dock Store and try a pint of it!

I'm not sure where sours will go next. They seem very mature for a trend, so I am expecting to see fewer of them this year than last, but maybe they're the next IPA where they stick around but we get styles within styles! One of my friends guessed that maybe, like the Milkshake IPAs, we'll get lactose sours! I'm excited to go out and visit a bunch of taprooms this spring and summer and find out what's next!

What trends do you see? Do you also think Milkshake IPAs are the next huge thing in beer? Which trend are you ready to see put behind us? I for one want West Coast brewers to stop dry hopping everything!

🍻,
Jenna

I have a handful of arguments I've formulated by spending almost certainly too long thinking about something largely inconsequential. The fun in this is finding the rare occasion where someone wants to talk about the weird thing for which I have a 6 part argument pre-prepared.
Here are a couple examples:

1. Gilmore Girls is a show about Rory's decision that being rich rules - a choice that her mother had rejected and that's why Logan is the best match for her. They're both insufferable rich monsters who should be terrible together.

2. Sailor Moon is the best superhero team. It is a perfect anime and manga about female friendship and Sailor Jupiter is the premier example of this.

and 3. the argument I want to make today: Beer cans are inherently superior to beer bottles.

Buckle up friends, because I got a surprising amount to say about this one. So I present, as my friend Casey so eloquently phrased it, my canifesto:

1. Recycling
This point is pretty exclusively for the US, but aluminum is much easier and more cost efficient to commercially recycle than glass. This is specific to the US because unlike other countries that sanitize and reuse glass, the US will completely melt down and reform the glass bottles. Recycling aluminum and glass are both cheaper than making new cans and bottles out of raw materials, and this point is the weakest when you live somewhere that reuses bottles instead. In the US at least, it's more expensive, inefficient, and energy intensive especially when it needs to be pre-sorted by color.

2. Light
Speaking of color, glass beer bottles come in (usually) 1 of 3 colors.
Clear: Corona, Sol, etc
Green: Heineken, Beck's, Dos Equis
Brown: All the major American Macros, most craft beer, etc.
For a little science lesson, let's talk about skunking!
Beer is a light sensitive liquid and will chemically react to light creating the skunk-like flavors present in Coronas and the like. Clear lets all light through, green lets the next most light through and then finally brown. This is why Corona tastes different out of  bottle than a can or keg. It is also why every bottle of Heineken you've ever had tastes terrible. Brown bottles are good, but they're not as good as they could be. Bottles in 6 pack holders and sold as singles sit in coolers or on shelves that have lights on all day every day. It's hard to stay fresh (especially for imported beers) when they're spending so much time in hostile beer environments. Cans however, by being opaque, allow no light through! There's no skunking,  beer tastes the same for longer and more like what it tastes like from a keg or in the brewer's taproom. If you want consistency and accuracy in your beer, go for a can!

3. Fragility
This is a practicality argument. If you drop a can of beer, you need a towel or mop to clean up the mess. Drop a glass bottle and you have a whole different level of mess on your hands. Anyone who has broken glass knows how hard it is to clean up and how easy it is to injure yourself or someone else in the process. This ties neatly into my next point:

4. Portability and Logistics
Since glass breaks, your local park, pool, or beach says no glass. If you want to take beer somewhere with you, cans are the clearly superior choice. They pack efficiently in coolers and bags, with the bonus that aluminum is lighter than glass. At a commercial level they pack neatly in boxes without the need for extra cardboard dividers, or can be sold in 4 or 6 pack rings (disposable or heartier reusable plastic) decreasing the amount of packaging waste.

I understand that it is much easier to find an affordable second hand bottling line for small brewers than a canning line. As brewers get bigger, I'm delighted to see that more and more of them are canning their beers. I think, especially as consumers, that it's important to consider the small every day choices in our life and advocating for designs that are better for everyone!

Next time you're given the choice between can or bottle, take a moment to consider! You might be surprised that you don't  dislike cans as much as you thought.

You can always just pour it into a glass anyway 😉🍻

I decided early on in my 20's that if I was going to drink, I wanted to
drink
1. something I enjoyed
2. something with a reasonable ABV to help me pace myself

Beers and ciders were natural conclusions of that choice. This brings me to my first beer love and first topic for this blog: Hefeweizens

Hefeweizens were the first beers I ever had that I truly loved. That love continues to this day 6+ years after I started drinking. There is a softness to hefeweizens that make them an extremely approachable and welcoming first favorite beer.

German beer styles tend to be my favorite as I don't like bitter flavors and the balanced profile of these beers are very appealing to me. I will definitely be touching on more of them in coming posts (Berliner Weisses, Goses, Kölsches, Pilsners, etc)

Hefs have low ABV, low IBUs, and low maltiness. The grain and yeast really shine especially in an unfiltered hef.

I would like to give a special shout out to local brewery 3 Mile for making the best American made Hefeweizen I've ever had. (Pictured below) My go to German Hef is Fransizkaner's. I could drink those little guys all day!

Hefeweizens are a huge reason why summer is my favorite beer season. I would say that there is no better beer on a hot day than a hefeweizen and I'm always thrilled when it gets rotated in as a summer seasonal, putting them on shelves and in tap lines. My personal favorite component of hef's flavor is when you get some banana notes to sparkle.

I love the easy drinking, not too filling, light and refreshing profile of a hefeweizen.

The thing I love about beer is that there are flavors I experience with beers that I can't find anywhere else. Nothing else can approximate the taste of a hefeweizen, or any other beer for that matter.

What was your first beer love? Was it Hamm's? Maybe a porter or stout? IPA? Do you still love that style? What's your favorite hefeweizen? I would love to talk to you about beer! Follow me on instagram, twitter or untappd @jennegatron!