WILLIAMSVILLE — Hefeweizens are wheat beers bottled with yeast (hefe is German for yeast), which clouds things up in the glass, but makes for a delightfully refreshing warm weather beverage.
Why, I pondered, did no one think to produce a Heiferweizen beer for Brattleboro's grand (and becoming ever-grander) Strolling of the Heifers weekend? This punderful idea is there for the taking next spring - a case or two of the end product will suffice for my creative input.
(I mentioned this to my daughter and she asked if such a beer would be made with genuine Vermont cowpies. This simply gave rise to another great brewing idea - a chocolate stout with Tom and Sally's chocolate cowpies. Throw in some Mocha Joe's coffee, and we have a Vermont Meadow Muffin Mocha Stout! No stealing this one - this could be big.)
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Long after the parade hoopla had died down on Strolling Saturday, we held the last beer tasting of the season at Windham Wines (we'll rev up again toward fall). In the Strolling spirit of supporting local farmers and food products - not to mention an eye on green practices - we held an all-Vermont tasting, something becoming ever easier to do.
In April the Brewers Association trade organization released the pleasing news that Vermont tops the U.S. state rankings in breweries per capita, based on our 19 breweries and 2008 census population estimates of 621,270. That means there's at least one brewery for every 32,698 of us. Fair enough. I'm willing to share.
In addition, the news pointed out that each of the Vermont producers is a “craft brewery,” meaning they're not simply turning out watery megasuds, but shooting a little higher on the beer evolutionary chart.
Craft brewing began in Vermont in 1988, the first taker after legislation allowing on-premise brewing and consumption (that is to say, a brewpub), being the Vermont Pub and Brewery in Burlington, still there, still brewing away.
Twenty-one years later things are still in a fine ferment, and the Brattleboro beer scene continues to blossom. What with the recent opening of The Tap Room at the Flat Street Brew Pub, and a new Co-op beer about to debut (brewed by Ray McNeill), it's clearly time to update the July '07 column when I strolled around town sampling the beer offerings - Pub Crawl II coming soon.
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Summer seasonal beers tend to be lighter than dark winter heavy hitters. Think wheat beers, hefeweizens, fruit beers, blond ales, witbiers, helles beers, Kolsches or pilsners, the end goal being refreshment, which may account for one beer I heard about from the 21st Amendment Brewery in San Francisco, a Hell or High Watermelon Wheat.
At the tasting we sampled eight Vermont beers, some from the Windham Wine Gallery taps, but all available in bottles. Some are year-round offerings, but some are strictly seasonal, so don't dawdle if looking to add some novelty to the summer cookout beer offerings.
1. Wolaver's: Ben Gleason's White Ale. Wolaver's is the organic branch of the Otter Creek Brewing Co. Most craft breweries have long been green in their practices, at least to the extent of recycling spent brewing grains to local farmers for use as cattle fodder. Wolaver's is now going further with an in-house treatment system for its wastewater, the largest single byproduct in brewing.
Part of the seasonal Farmer Series, this particular white ale was straightforwardly named: Ben Gleason has been growing organic wheat for 28 eight years at his farm in Bridport, just ten miles from the Middlebury brewery.
White ales are derived from Belgian witbiers, characterized by additions of spices, usually coriander and orange peel, producing a tartly refreshing drink. The Wolaver's fit the bill, though it seemed more tame than tart, coming in at 5 percent alcohol by volume (ABV).
2. Harpoon: UFO. Slightly cheating, since Harpoon is as much a Boston brewer as a Vermont one, but ever since taking over the Windsor brewing facilities of the late, lamented Catamount Brewing Co., Harpoon can rightfully claim dual citizenship.
The UFO is an American Hefeweizen (4.8 percent ABV), meaning it has more of a citrus nose than the clove character one would find in a Munich version. Again, this seemed a fairly mild interpretation to me, but suitable to the purpose. A wit style of UFO was introduced in June.
3. Long Trail: Double Bag (double Alt). Long Trail, in Bridgewater, celebrated its 20th birthday in May, not long after finishing in good company in 34th place in the rankings of the top 50 brewing companies in the U.S. (by 2008 sales volume).
The Double Bag, which certainly has a heifer-related label (a cartoon of two bovines viewed from the rear, displaying, well, their bags), is a richly malty, alt-style beer common to Düsseldorf, sturdy at 7.2 percent ABV, but still refreshing. It was a favorite of many of the tasters.
4. Magic Hat: Wacko. This was the least favorite of most of the tasters, though not without some fans. I found it a bland and bewildering effort, though it's certainly an eye-opener. That's because the use of beet sugar and beet juice have produced a rosé-colored beer, but with no apparent effect on what little flavor there is.
Magic Hat in Burlington - Vermont's largest brewer, ranked 18th nationally - has never been hemmed in by stylistic boundaries. There's something to be said for that, but this 4.5-percent ABV offering is just a little too wacko.
5. Rock Art: Tomahawkus ESB2. The Rock Art Brewery opened in Johnson in 1997 and moved to Morrisville in 2002, where owner/brewer Matthew Nadeau creates a wide variety of styles. The Tomahawkus is the first in what he calls his Extreme Beer series, and it is a big one, an Extra Special Bitter squared, or maybe cubed, really a strong ale style at 8 percent ABV.
But the beer is less about alcoholic warmth than hop aggressiveness, using loads of the piney Tomahawk hop, and one either likes it or not. All the hopheads in attendance liked it.
6. Long Trail: Double IPA. And there was nothing for hopheads not to like in another Long Trail offering, this one from the occasional Brewmaster's Series, an unfiltered “Imperial” India Pale Ale (except maybe the Imperial designation, an ersatz way of saying, “Take a style and more or less double everything about it, from ingredients to ABV").
But this wildly fruity, spicy, yet firmly malty beer is quite an accomplishment. It was my favorite of the tasting, and I've been buying it regularly since. It will probably vanish sometime this month.
7. McNeill's: Pullman Porter. Once upon a time Ray McNeill took over Dewey's Ale House on South Main Street, began an internship at Catamount in 1991, and the rest is brewing history. McNeill's Brewery is now an institution on Elliot Street, and the new McNeill's brewing facilities on Putney Road have passed through the crucible of initial installation woes.
The current Pullman Porter (5.5 percent ABV) is Ray at the top of his game: a rich dark ale that is still not out of place, slightly chilled, at the summer table.
8. Harpoon: Quad. Since the Otter Creek Helles Alt hadn't arrived for the tasting, we turned again to Harpoon. (I've since had the Helles Alt, however, and it bears, so to speak, comparison to the Double Bag.)
The Quad is an entry in the Harpoon Leviathan series, meaning a whale of a beer, coming in at 11.75 ABV, fermented with a blend of two Trappist ale yeasts. The impression is more of toffee sweetness than lid-lifting warmth, almost a bit cloying for me. But some laying-down time should mellow it out nicely - maybe until next summer, when mellow will again be the seasonal mood.