My favorite: Sum­mit Black Ale

Mmmm beer. 2011 was a good year for it. Over at my beer blog, 195Bottles, I com­piled the best and worst of the 300-some beers I reviewed over the last 12 months. For those that pre­fer to cut to the chase, here’s my high­light and lowlight:

Sum­mit Black Ale
Sum­mit Brew­ing Com­pany
Amer­i­can Black Ale | 6.50% ABV

4.47/5
look: 4 | smell: 4.5 | taste: 4.5 | feel: 4.5 | over­all: 4.5

A lit­tle research shows this is the same brewer that made up the very very tasty India Rye Ale last year. This beer does what many dark ales fail, or at least fail to mas­ter, the bal­anc­ing the lighter upfront hoppy notes with the rich dark malts. This beer smells like fresh grape­fruit and cit­rus fruit sit­ting on top of toasty cocoa bar­ley. Yum. The fla­vor fol­lows up with a big­ger malt kick and hint of wheat and caramel sneak­ing in as the pine and orange peel build on the choco­late malt through­out the fin­ish. This is one of the best black IPAs I’ve had, right up with, maybe above, Deschutes’ Hop in the Dark.

Palma Louca Pale Pil­sner
Cerve­jaria Kaiser
Ger­man Pilsener | 4.50% ABV

1.95/5
look: 3.5 | smell: 2.5 | taste: 1.5 | feel: 2 | over­all: 2

I hope nobody is seri­ously call­ing this mess a Ger­man pil­sner. I don’t usu­ally walk away from a beer, but I left nearly half of this at the bar. This tasted like well water with lemon cookie ground up and mixed in. Yes, the body was watery. No, it wasn’t refresh­ing or pleas­ant. Steer clear.

My favorite home­brew­ing book.

October’s been going quite well thus far. Last Sun­day while loi­ter­ing in Barnes & Noble I found my book (and imme­di­ately improved its place­ment). Does it’s look good? You can order the Brewer’s Appren­tice here.

I also just got word from the IACP—the Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion of Culi­nary Pro­fes­sion­als, not the Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion of Chiefs of Police—that my pro­posed ses­sion on barrel-aged beer was approved. At their annual con­fer­ence, I’ll be lead­ing a 90-minute class with the Brook­lyn Brewery’s Brew­mas­ter, Gar­rett Oliver. Garrett’s gen­er­ous enough to dig into the brewery’s bar­rel room to serve up some never-released good­ies. It’s going to be fun. And it’s going to be f’ing delicious.

Back at Bicycling.com, I also got tapped for a radio inter­view with Hine­sight on the Min­neapo­lis CBS sta­tion, WCCO. We had a pleas­ant lit­tle chat about fall rides, Surly Bikes, and win­ter com­mut­ing. You can take a lis­ten here.

This week my advanced copy of the Brewer’s Appren­tice arrived in the mail and then I saw the book go up on Amazon.com. Come Octo­ber 1, it should land in book­stores as well. Life is good.

As much as I enjoyed research­ing and writ­ing this home­brew­ing book along with my co-author Greg Koch from Stone Brew­ing, it’s a relief to finally have the time to brew beer instead of just write about it. My cur­rent batch is a Bel­gian IPA with a good help­ing of home-grown hops tossed into the brew kettle.

(L-R) Keiser, me, Crosby, Frankie

I try to rarely com­plain about my job (Bicy­cling mag online edi­tor) because on a whole, it’s mas­sively cool. I write and edit arti­cles about bikes—riding, rac­ing, fix­ing, and any­thing else you can do with a bike in polite company.

So as part of cov­er­ing this summer’s Tour de France, I got to fol­low the race for eight stage. I joined out pho­tog­ra­pher, James Startt, and the video crew (pic­tured) in Brit­tany, and fol­lowed the race until it hit the Pyre­nees near Spain.

A typ­i­cal day saw us leave the hotel at 9 a.m., to arrive at the Tour’s start town two hours before the rid­ers take off. We’d get set­tled in the start vil­lage and read L’Equipe (or if your French is as mediocre as mind, look at the results and pre­tend to read the arti­cles). Also, because I can’t travel any­where with­out try­ing the local food, and the start vil­lages always had local cheese and meat, I’d make myself a lit­tle brunch.

In the hour before the start we’d stake out the team buses to inter­view rid­ers and coaches, then head out on course about 20 min­utes before the rid­ers left. I usu­ally trav­eled with James, so we’d stop once to pho­to­graph the break­away and pelo­ton, and then a sec­ond time if we could find a place for lunch.

James Startt doing his thing.

Even­tu­ally we’d make it to the press room in the fin­ish town. There’d be more run­ning around and chas­ing down rid­ers for inter­views and then about three hours of writ­ing and editing.

Quit­ting time was often deter­mined by what time our hotel’s restau­rant closed and how far the drive was. Din­ner was almost never open late enough or close enough, so I sat by for more than a few har­row­ing dri­ves with squeal­ing car tires on one-lane moun­tain passes.

We’d stum­ble in the restau­rant around 10 p.m. after sev­eral calls to assure them we were just around the cor­ner so they should really hold the kitchen just a few more min­utes. I’d eat what­ever was local or defin­i­tively French—steak tartare, andouil­lette, lots of duck– and then find some way to include a local cheese in the meal.

No, I didn’t go to France to eat and drink. But frankly, after cov­er­ing this race all month and work­ing four straight week­ends, I’d rather talk about the glut­tony than the work. I’m sure you understand.

A cou­ple culi­nary high­lights were:

–Drink­ing locally brewed and dis­tilled Cal­va­dos in Normandy

–Fresh, unpas­tur­ized goat and sheep cheese

–Eat­ing a cas­soulet in a 13th Cen­tury vil­lage while the power kept going out

–Finally try­ing hip­pocras, a mead/wine hybrid drink

–Hon­or­able men­tion: all the other cheeses. So many cheeses, so lit­tle time.

Johnny Hooger­land limped up to the podium for his polka dot climber’s jer­sey. He received 30-odd stitched after a French TV car sent him crash­ing into a barbed wire fence.

Fueled by bikes and beer.

It was a long win­ter and not just because the end­less freez­ing rain. Back in August I started work­ing on an advanced (or at least non-beginner) home­brew­ing book with Stone Brew­ing CEO Greg Koch. I had a blast work­ing with Greg on the roughly 20 chap­ters, but it also made for a few late night Decem­ber through February.

I think Greg described the project best as a great book to read when you want to think about brew­ing. Each chap­ter is focused on one aspect of brew­ing — any­thing from Bel­gian lam­bics to aroma hops — and has a fea­ture inter­view with an expert pro brewer. A few of the inter­vie­wees include Lost Abbey’s Tomme Arthur, Russ­ian River’s Vin­nie Cil­urzo, and Dog­fish Head’s Sam Cala­gione. I think I did a fine job keep­ing the tech­ni­cal stuff lively, but these guys ensured it’ll be a hell of a read.

The Brewer’s Appren­tice will hit shelves in Octo­ber this year. Check it out.

No, I’m not claim­ing there are any ben­e­fits besides the warm glow of alco­hol and the great taste of craft beer. But if you’re going to enjoy a post-work out beer, I wrote up a 12-pack of some of my favorites.

Inter­est­ingly enough, from my health research work I know there’s a Span­ish study that was inter­preted by many to show that beer hydrates bet­ter after a work­out than water. From read­ing the study and per­sonal expe­ri­ence, I’d count on water and sports drink if I’m wor­ried about hydra­tion lev­els. How­ever, when water isn’t a con­cern (besides, most beer is about 94% H2O), these are what I’d drink.

A long night of research

Ear­lier this sum­mer I was invited by friends at the FCI to give a demon­stra­tion on beer and cheese pair­ing for their stu­dents. The only thing more fun than hav­ing a cap­tive audi­ence for 90 min­utes as I went on about my two favorite food groups was the research. Many good cheeses were eaten and many fine beers con­sumed, but here’s the lineup I set­tled on.

The was no clear crowd favorite, but rather lots of mixed, strong opin­ions (a good thing I think). I thought ched­dar and IPA were a nat­ural match. Many agreed, but some folks just weren’t tast­ing it. My per­sonal favorites though were the tripel with aged goat cheese and then the stil­ton and bar­ley­wine. The Belgian/goat pair­ing was a recent rev­e­la­tion for me, while the stinky blue and bar­ley­wine is a beer and cheese pair­ing classic.

Pair­ing 1: Ger­man Hefeweizen (Sierra Nevada Keller­weis) with Fresh Goat’s Milk Cheese (Ver­mont But­ter and Cheese Cream­ery Chevre)

Pair­ing 2: Amer­i­can Amber Lager (Brook­lyn Lager) with aged Fontina (used a last-minute sub and I for­got the name)

Pair­ing 3: Amer­i­can IPA (Union Jack IPA) with Sharp Ched­dar (Tillam­ook Extra Sharp Cheddar)

Pair­ing 4: Bel­gian Tripel (Alla­gash Tripel Reserve) with Ripened Goat’s Milk Cheese (Cypress Grove Hum­boldt Fog)

Pair­ing 5: Amer­i­can Brown Ale (Rogue Hazel­nut Brown) with Manchego (El Tri­gal Aged Manchego)

Pair­ing 6: Amer­i­can Bar­ley­wine (Green Flash Bar­ley­wine) with Blue Stil­ton (Col­ston Bassett)

Give me a shout if you want to chat about beer and cheese. I’m more than happy to go on at length about it.

Check out my Port­fo­lio page. I just added a clip from July’s Runner’s World. I’ve had a few projects with Runner’s World lately, but this was by far the most excit­ing. It was one of those arti­cles where there were enough great side-stories that I could have gone on inter­view­ing rac­ers for months.

Every year about a thou­sand runner’s run, walk, and stum­ble 150 miles across Morocco’s Sahara Dessert. Amaz­ingly, more than 90% of rac­ers fin­ish. They deal with every­thing from near-debilitating blis­ters to scor­pion bites, but can’t seem to get enough of the race. Take a read for yourself.

Over the sum­mer I joined the Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion of Culi­nary Pro­fes­sion­als at the sug­ges­tion of cook­book writer Dave Joachim. And with his encour­age­ment and help, I put together a con­fer­ence ses­sion on beer using local ingre­di­ents for the IACP’s annual get together. With the con­fer­ence being in Port­land this spring, writ­ing and talk­ing about the beer comes nat­u­rally, and so in about a month, Jamie Emmer­son of Full Sail Brew­ing and Brett Joyce of Rogue Ales will join me to talk about how they make amaz­ing beer with Oregon’s own water, hops, bar­ley and yeast. It should be fun.

To help pro­mote my ses­sion, I wrote a piece on a cou­ple of the other Port­land brew­eries (Upright Brew­ing and Lau­rel­wood) that also use Ore­gon ingre­di­ents to make awe­some beer. You can check out the arti­cle here.

Never doubt for a sec­ond that Port­land, Ore­gon is beer heaven. Any search for pure beer-vana can ignore Munich’s rau­cous beer halls, Belgium’s brew­ing monks and the U.K.‘s cozy pubs. When it comes to the num­ber of brew­eries, diver­sity of styles, qual­ity of brew and pure enthu­si­asm, there’s no bet­ter place in the world to raise a pint than Port­land…

One of my semi-regular gigs that’s more about fun and less about money is the Gear of the Day sec­tion of Bicy­cling Magazine’s web­site. You don’t have to read much about me to quickly real­ize I love cycling in pretty much all forms, so get­ting to test gear and share my thoughts on the best of the best is some­thing I look for­ward to every cou­ple months.

Any­ways, here’s my take on some cold-weather knick­ers from GORE I’ve been wear­ing (I did 41 miles in them today actually).I also wrote a review of a new pair of Sugoi’s high-end bib shorts that’s also a dia­tribe about how I pick out my bike shorts for the day — pretty inter­est­ing stuff.