Distill my beating heart: A whiskey odyssey

Boston Beer Co., makers of Samuel Adams, announced today a partnership with Berkshire Mountain Distillers--their in-state brethren purveying adult beverages--to create two whiskies literally made from two different Sam Adams beers including the flagship Boston Lager.

The story was picked up by several news outlets including the Wall Street Journal. It's a new frontier for craft brewers and distillers to be sure. But the press release chose its words carefully to insinuate, but not state, that Jim Koch is the Christopher Columbus discovering this new world (though maybe that's an apt comparison since Chris gets the credit but hardly "discovered" an already inhabited frontier).

As I'd reported in a Draft Magazine story in 2010, "Whiskey is a distillate made from 'low wash' or 'distiller’s beer,' meaning it contains the same malted grain, water and yeast that all beer has. The difference is that the beer we drink is bittered, usually with hops." The story was about Charbay, a winemaker and distiller in the San Francisco Bay Area using various beers, predominantly from local Bear Republic Brewing, to turn into whisky whereby master distiller Marko Karakasevic uses " a copper alembic pot (to make) cuts to the distillate to ensure only the hearts—the most desirable liquid—and not the heads or tails, remain." (That other stuff is the reason moonshine has a reputation for making you go blind.)

Oddly, the WSJ story also notes that Boston Beer isn't the first brewing company to get into the microdistilling biz. (Those who've tasted Utopias, first introduced in 2002 and clocking in usually at 27% alcohol but more like 54-proof, would say they're already selling cognac or something close to it.) It says that Rogue from Oregon, "for example," started distilling in 2003. Other breweries-cum-distilleries include Dogfish Head and Ballast Point. But I'm curious why they didn't just point to Anchor. Established in 1896, it famously launched the craft/micro brewing revolution in 1965 when Fritz Maytag salvaged the brewery. The microbrewing renaissance didn't begin until over a decade later. Maytag did the same with whiskey and craft distillation in 1993 when Anchor Distilling was born.

The first time I'd interviewed Fritz, he said, “In the eighties when all the competition came in the brewing world, some of the fun went out of it. Then I found out that no commercial American whiskies were made in a traditional manner. When I heard that, I realized, we’re going to make an all-malt, pot-distilled rye whisky aged in uncharred barrels. You don’t put hops in it, but whisky is really distilled beer.”

The Boston Beer Co. deserves a tremendous amount of credit as an early pioneer in the good ol' days of better beer. Starting in 1984, Koch put a better product in front of millions of Americans and had the gumption (and advertising moolah) to convince them they could be drinking a better tasting beer. They now release 40-some-odd active beers a year. And while they were the company behind Hard Core Ciders, they've things up quite a bit with Angry Orchards brand ciders. Can their foray into the world of winemaking be far behind?

Perhaps they're waiting until 2015ish to see how the whiskies do.

Glutards on parade

It's not as bad as being blind or deaf, but I think having Celiacs Disease or in any way allergic to gluten would suck. Because beer is glutenous.

One in 133 Americans are in some way gluten-intolerant. Drink normal beer and they will surely get sick. As such, there is a growing market for gluten-free beers. Instead of traditional cereals like barley, they’re generally made from sorghum and/or buckwheat. Tragically for the glutarded, most are unpalatable. I've tried several styles of GF beer on tap at the Deschutes pub, and I wouldn't offer a pint to my worst enemy.

So naturally, I balked when I just got a press release from Craft Brew Alliance (the umbrella under which Widmer Bros. falls, at which the Omission brand of GF beers is brewed), announcing:

Mayor Sam Adams will declare May 16 to be Gluten-Free Beer Day in Portland, Ore. The official ceremony will be held at City Hall, and we invite you to witness Adams deliver the proclamation to supporters of gluten-free beer, including the latest addition to Portland’s established gluten-free beer scene, Omission Beer.

Now, Portland’s first and only entirely gluten-free brewery, Harvester, adds chestnut flour and tons of hops to make their GF beers genuinely tasty. The just-launched Omission brand of authentic flavored beers (they're made from real barley malt but filtered to the point it features less than 20 parts per million making it as gluten-free as N/A beers that are 0.5% ABV or less) are also entirely quaffable. But do we really need a Gluten-Free Beer Day?? I always say that PDX has 53 beer festivals, meaning you're sure to find some c-ale-abration more than once a week. But GFBD? C'mon, Sam Adams, hasn't that already been lampooned by Portlandia?

Beer dinners past and future

Beer is making me fat.

That's not exactly stop-the-presses news. But it's been something that's been on my mind, and gut, lately. It seems

 the more beer dinners I go to (most recently this kick-ass Dogfish Head dinner at Hopmonk. Left: Half Pint w/ chef Billy Reid; Right: Half Pint with Dogfish rep Bryant Goulding. Each shown actual height!) and the ones in the near-future as part of SF Beer Week 2010, the more out of shape I get. It's a trend I hope to reverse, which is why Half Pint and I registered for a half marathon.

 We have no delusions of slender. It's on Super Bowl Sunday. And at the start of SF Beer Week. And we're going to the Anchor beer lunch or dinner at Hopmonk Tavern that day.

We're doing this for our health and for other reasons. Seriously, check out said reason which you can read about in this post at Bryan Kolesar's Brew Lounge.

So, yes, I'm in training. But I'm not the most resolute runner. And with events like this recent Samuel Adams Utopias beer dinner at Monk's Kettle I didn't have the resolve to turn down, it's no wonder I'm still a far cry from being in tuxedo shape.

I know what my New Year's resolution is. What's yours?

Sam Adams Headache

During the interim phase of my beer drinking career between finding the cheapest way to get drunk and finding the best tasting beers regardless of cost, I occasionally ordered Sam Adams. There may have been more than one beer from the Boston Beer Co. out there, but all I knew was Boston Lager. But I'd more often than not opt for Grolsch (fun latch-top) or Moosehead (everything from Canada is fun). I found myself telling people "Sam Adams gives me an expensive headache."

I rarely imbibe Grolsch or Mooshead anymore. No Scarcely a good beer pours forth from green bottles. But I rarely drink Sammy either, mostly because while I respect what Jim's doing, I think there are always better examples of his styles.

So when I popped into BevMo (what? it's right next to the post office and I needed to buy Mother's Day cards in a hurry! Yes, they even had ones for my grandmas!) I walked out with the Sam Adams Long Shot mixed pack to try Tasty's DIPA, Alex's Bock, and the Cranberry Wit. I also got the Imperial Series' White and Stout since I've never had an imperial white and I love imperial stouts.

With dinner, Half Pint & I shared one bottle of the Cranberry Wit then a bottle of the Imperial White. Altogether, I had one full bottle.

I woke up in the middle of the night with a raging headache as if I'd consumed my entire haul.

After several Google searches for things like "Sam Adams, headache" and "whenever I drink Sam Adams I get a headache" I discovered I'm not the only one in this boat.

Is there some secret ingredient I'm allergic to even though I don't have any known allergies? Is it merely psychological? Does Jim Koch have a vendetta against me (even though I nominated him for the Mt. Rushmore of Beer in my book)? If anyone has any answers or theories, I'd love to hear 'em.