New Favorite

The new kid on the block in Dallas, with surprisingly large scale distribution, is Alaskan Brewing Co. (http://www.alaskanbeer.com).  With our next-door suburb, Plano TX moving into the current century by allowing liquor sales, several large upscale liquor stores have recently open with a very wide array of beer choices.  While searching for a reasonably priced, US-made ESB (Extra Special Bitter) I happened to see a 6-pack of Alaskan ESB and picked it up.

Now the gold standard for ESB is Fullers ESB, imported from London, England (Fuller's also makes London Pride, one of my favorite all time beers and my go-to when I'm in the UK).  Fuller's ESB is well balanced, a sublime combination of malt with just the right amount of hops.

One of the best

I also bought another ESB, but I don't know remember the name - it just wasn't memorable.  It was from the West Coast, had a black label and was far too hoppy.

And that's a problem for many current beers, especially from the West Coast of America.  There seems to be a competition among brewers in Oregon and Washington states to make the vilest, most bitter possible IPA (India Pale Ale) and regular Pale Ales with high alcoholic content (ABV).  So knowing Alaska sits above Seattle and Alaskan's pride themselves on being hardy, my expectations were set low......

A new favorite!

And wrong.  The Alaskan ESB is mild flavored (despite the name, ESB's are NOT supposed to be bitter), well balanced beer with strong head.  A sipping beer to bring the full flavor to bear, but not so strongly flavored as to discourage quaffing.  You can read the marketing hype here (http://www.alaskanbeer.com/our-brew/seasonal-beers/spring-release.html), but what counts is that this a Great One - I have new second favorite beer (after Samuel Adams Boston Lager).

And after that, I tried the Alaskan IPA - it while not quite so "blow-my-socks -off" great, it's still a good beer - I can only suppose that with Vancouver and a stretch of British Columbia between Juneau and the Seattle Hop Insanity (great name for a rock band!), in the dark Alaskan winter nights a new brand of smoothness was born and grew.

I might have to move.....

Starting Small

Beer drinking and flying have always gone together.  The FAA and other aviation authorities frown on the like, but pilots have always drunk beer - usually not wine, and only infrequently stronger drinks.  Beer has fueled countless officer's clubs on military airfields - read just about any WW2 biography and you will find pilots and beer.

I grew up in Europe, in a place where flying was hard to get, but beer was easy.  The drinking age was 14, unless we went to neighboring countries where there was no minimum drinking age.  I drank wine from around age 12, and alcoholic cider from around age 2 (ask my Mom about THAT!)

Somewhere around age 16 I started to drink lager beer, but the lager was generally fizzy and tasteless, coming from Ireland (Harp!), and we used to add lime juice to make it taste palatable.  I went to college in the capital city, and started drinking Carlsberg Lager, without lime juice, from the student bar (yes, European colleges have bars for students, run by students).

Then my parents emigrated to the USA, and after graduation with a degree in Aeronautical Engineering, I followed.  I tried the American Pilsner style beers, and they were uniformly BAD, fermented with barley cut with rice to make it lighter in color and "beer" taste.  Budweiser, Miller, Stohs, Pabst, uniformly terrible, worse even than Harp, designed for people who don't really like beer and just want "pop" with alcohol.  Eventually I found Coors, which wasn't awful, and especially Coors Extra Gold, which was 25% of the way towards good.  Of course Coors doesn't make that any more.

Coors Extra Gold - 25% of the way towards "good"

American beers of the 1970s and 1980s and 1990s were for people who don't like the taste of beer.  I bought German Heineken and when I could find it, Danish Carlsberg.  Then on a business trip to Atlanta, I had a Samuel Adams Boston Lager in a hotel bar.  I thought I'd died and gone (undeservedly) to Heaven.

It IS the best beer made in America - still

Starting around 1990 I'd started to make my own beer in 5 gallon batches.  I learned about pilsners, lagers, real ales, extra special bitters, real Budweiser, pale ales and India pale ales, and beers made with fruit.  I made some excellent IPA's with blueberries, and decent golden pilsner that my wife liked.  I gathered beer bottles my the hundreds, and all my clothes got white spots from spilled bleach (all home brewers know about that!).

After tasting Samuel Adams, every time anyone went to Boston, I'd ask them to bring me back a 6 pack.  In the meantime, I dedicated myself to duplicating that brew, and I got very, very close.  I could make a cold fermented lager that tasted just like Boston Lager, although I never could match the color.  Mine remained steadfastly golden colored.  But Sam Adams started to become available in Texas, along with other good beers like Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and sometimes Harpoon.  Eventually the prices dropped, and I stopped making my own in favor of just buying it.

Now when I travel, I look for the best beers and new experiences.  Once in a while I find a new beer that just blows my socks off - the last one was Elysium Night Owl Pumpkin Ale (http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/700/7077/) - awesome, brilliant and impossible to find. I tried it in a restaurant in Georgetown in DC, overlooking the Potomac River, but you can only buy it in the autumn, and only from a few locations.

A strong challenger to Boston Beer's throne (but hard to get)

This blog will try to capture the experience, and point the way towards brewing excellence.