Darkness stands in wait.
Fresh or aged is the question.
I want it both ways.

Written by human24.

References: Darkness is a limited release Russian Imperial Stout by Surly Brewing Company
Thing of the Day: Clone Brews: Homebrew Recipes for 150 Commercial Beers

Sponsor: Beer Haiku Daily merchandise. Get the official T-Shirts here. They make great gifts!

I learned today that the Oasis location of Sacramento Brewing on Madison Avenue in Citrus Heights has closed its doors for good. The original location at Town and Country Village is alive and well and will continue as usual. Recent rumors that Sacramento Brewing was in danger of closing are simply not true. After the remaining beer in the tanks at Oasis is finished, all production — including bottling — will take place at Town & Country.

I’m told business at the Oasis location was always hand to mouth, even from the very beginning, but with the economic times we currently face dipped down below profitable levels. At Town and Country, on the other hand, business remains good and the new owner is optimistic and confident that will continue.

Head brewer Peter Hoey tells me that he will concentrate on having at least a dozen Sacramento beers on tap at any given time and will begin introducing guest taps, possibly as many as 24 in an effort to make the brewpub a Sacramento destination for not only his beers, but better beers of all stripes.

Some some good news, some bad. I’m certainly pleased to learn that the brewery is not closing. I think Peter is a talented, under-appreciated brewer so it will interesting to see what he comes up with this year in the way of specialty beers, which he promises won’t be dull.

If you enjoyed this post or the Bulletin generally, please consider buying me a pint

It’s Monday, so muse on this link from Parade magazine. Two bits of drink related information in the same story:

- The birth of the Corona-and-lime ritual. Did this trend really become a trend because a bartender wanted to see if he could start a trend?

- Oom-pah-pah, ein Deutsche bier, bitte. From the story: “British researchers played either accordion-heavy French music or a German brass band over the speakers of the wine section inside a large supermarket. On French music days, 77% of consumers bought French wine, whereas on German music days, the vast majority of consumers picked up a German selection. Intriguingly, only one out of the 44 customers who agreed to answer a few questions at the checkout counter mentioned the music as among the reasons they bought the wine they did.”

I’d have been more impressed if the customers had put back wine on German music days and gone with beer.

Well I used to run from the past
But the world got to spinnin’ so fast
I run from the future now
I run as fast as I can
Tryin’ to be a simple man
I just want to slow down.

               - Chris Knight

Best recording of 2008? I spoke too soon.

When Sean Lilly Wilson asked for a few sentences for the Fullstream Brewery newsletter about the best “album” we purchased in 2008 I took the request seriously. Didn’t want to forget something because our long journey has experiences running together. So I re-listened to my finalists — James McMurtry, Billy Bragg, B.B. King, Randy Newman, Mary Gauthier and company.

What I found was a lot of recordings that I’ll listen to forever, dang good, but not quite great. So I picked “Another Country” from Tift Merritt, in part because her songwriting just keeps getting better and because, by a bit of luck in July, we caught a wonderful free concert in Burlington, Vermont. Or maybe just because she is from North Carolina and Fullstream is in North Carolina. A karma thing.

Not until the day after Christmas did I notice Chris Knight had released “Heart of Stone” a few days before we departed for Germany. Easy given the amount of press coverage he doesn’t receive, although his Amazon sales prove he’s got a bit of a following.

I’ve been listening to it a lot since. If you must drink at least two full servings (six is a better idea) of a beer before you evaluate it then you gotta listen to an album ten or a hundred times. Do the easy-to-listen-to-lyrics get cloying? Do you find something new and rewarding (kind of like the stuff in the background of a Simpson’s episode) each time, maybe as simple as the way he delivers a phrase?

This recording (it’s not an album or a CD; I bought a download) keeps getting better. Knight writes haunting lyrics — usually grim and sometimes violent — about less-than-perfect lives. The music is dense whether acoustic (as the “Basement Tapes”) or with a rocking band in this recording. He’s a wonderful story teller, as opposed to telling stories about wonderful lives. Here’s an example from “Hell Ain’t Half Full”:

Get up in the morning
Fall out of bed
Go down to the basement
Cook up a little meth
All the young folks love it
Coming back for more
Ain’t it good to be working
Got your foot in the door

You’ve got to buy the recording to get the full story, and then maybe to the five that came before it to begin understand what life lessons Knight has to offer. He’s a working guy from the blue collar town of Slaughters, Kentucky. You figure he might be a beer drinker, one of us, but even if he isn’t there’s a comparison to be made. Nashville and industrially produced beers on one side of the ledger, artists liked Chris Knight and the beers we drink on the other.

Chris Knight writes and sings songs of conviction.

Beerme (Mike) at Beer and Firkins has posted the roundup for The Session #24, a round of looking back and forward.

And February host David Turley has picked what some of us would consider a romantic theme for #24: “A Tripel for Two.”

If you have a beer or beer-related blog, it’s easy to participate in The Session. Pick a Belgian-style Tripel to review. Tell us why it’s your pick to share with that special someone. Be sure to include a review of the beer so that others might be inspired to choose that beer for a special moment. Bonus points if the person with whom you are sharing the beer includes their review as well.

The date is Feb. 6.

Now the shameless plug. If you want to learn more about tripels you’ve got time to order and read “Brew Like a Monk.” My wife, daughter and 16 customers think it is pretty good.

On January 1st, 2008, I took a look back at my beery adventures of 2007 by using posts to this blog as my guide. It’s a common way of wrapping up the year - Troy, for example, did it for 2008 - but due to the Three Month Gap and other periods of sporadic posting for me last year, it’s not really gonna work for me this time around.

Instead, I’ll just give some quick thoughts on a few highlights from the year recently ended:

Beer Dinner of the Year: As much as I would love to put the Southern Tier dinner at the top of the list (mainly because I helped out in the planning and promotion and acted as a co-host for the evening.), I’m afraid that there’s no competition with this one - the winner is clearly the Dogfish Head dinner at beerbistro back in May. I can only hope and pray that Sam Calagione was serious when he said that he’d like to make it an annual event.

Beer Event of the Year: This is a tough one (especially since I never got around to writing about a lot of ‘em - links will be provided elsewhere where applicable). Cask Days 2008 is an obvious choice, since Ralph and co. at Volo outdid themselves yet again with an absolutely stupendous weekend. There were some great new events, such as the Hart House Craft Beer Festival & Summer BBQ and the Victory Summer Cask Ale Festival. But I’ll have to give the nod to The Brewer’s Plate, a tasting event that partnered local fine dining chefs with local breweries in support of Green Enterprise Toronto. It was great to see such a wide array of people enjoying great food with great beer, and I really look forward to this year’s edition.

New Bar of the Year: While they don’t really promote themselves as a ‘beer destination’ per se, I have to give props to The Cock & Tail. The tap line-up is solid, with lots of local favourites, and the bottle selection of (mostly) imports is quite impressive for what is essentially a neighbourhood hangout and watering hole. A lot of new bars are lured over to the dark side with promises of discounts and kickbacks, and end up with the standard line-up of bland macros and shitty imports available at so many other places, so it’s great to see that some owners are willing to stick with their principles to serve the good stuff. (Runner-up: The Football Factory)

New Local Beer of the Year: There were probably a few new beers that I enjoyed more last year, notably festival one-offs and the like. But my favourite new brew that’s regularly available is Granite Hopping Mad. As a hoppy pale ale, it’s a beer that would probably seem pedestrian to many, especially any Americans reading this. But here in a province where hop-forward beers are still a bit of a novelty, it’s nice to have another addition to the few that we have.

I’m sure if I stewed on this a bit longer, I could come up with a few more things to add to the list, but I’d like to get this done before the next new year comes around. So let’s leave it at that.

It seems that a lot of breweries are making their version of a chocolate stout these days.  It’s not enough just to make a standard stout, instead they take great pains to cram a ton of chocolatey goodness into their beer which at times results in beer that smells like it will send you into a diabetic coma.  I tend to stay away from sweets even though I think they’re very delicious, so I’m quite fortunate that brewmasters have found a way to combine two things that I like to put in my mouth, beer and chocolate.

This is a limited edition offering found in the Winter variety pack.  It pours with a dark black hue and a frothy, caramel colored head.  The moment I put the glass to my nose I became an instant fan of this beer.  At this point I don’t care how it tastes, if I have to I’ll just smell it.  The aroma harkens me back to my “husky” days when I would double fist McDonalds ice cream sundaes.  This beer smells just like the chocolate fudge that served not only as a massive weight gainer but also a female deterrant.  Lucky me, I know…The taste isn’t quite as delicious as the smell but it’s good enough to make me want more.  The fudginess thins a bit as it is cut by a sweeter cherry flavor.  It has an effervescent mouthfeel in the back of the mouth which also causes the chocolate taste to dissipate just a hair.  This is in contrast to the initial taste which is very creamy and rich.  A slight alcohol bite accompanies dark, bitter chocolate notes and finishes this beer.  All in all this has been a very delightful experience.  This certainly isn’t my favorite chocolate stout-style beer but I cannot say without any uncertainty that it is well above average.

Stranded in the cold
With no beer for dinner guests
Cursed Sunday laws

Written by Captain Hops.

References: Come on now! Can’t we just get these stupid laws off the books?
Thing of the Day: Ludicrous Laws and Mindless Misdemeanors

Sponsor: Beer Haiku Daily Store powered by Amazon Gifts for Beer and Haiku lovers handpicked by Captain Hops.

While the name John Brack is not often heard outside his native Australia, down under he’s one of the most well-known fine artists. As one of the Antipodeans — a group of seven modern artists who “asserted the importance of figurative art, and protested against abstract expressionism” — he made a name for himself in the local Melbourne art scene in the mid-1950s.

Today’s painting is known as The Bar, and was painted in 1954.

It was in the news somewhat recently, when in 2006 it sold for $3.12 million dollars, setting a new record for the highest price paid for a work of art from Australia. It was purchased privately, so it won’t be available for public viewing, as the Victoria Museum had hoped. They own three of Brack’s works, including his famous Collins Street 5 p.m., which is widely considered to be the companion of The Bar. Both paintings are mentioned in the Wikipedia entry:

Brack’s early conventional style evolved into one of simplified, almost stark, shapes and areas of deliberately drab colour, often featuring large areas of brown. He made an initial mark in the 1950s with works on then contemporary Australian culture, such as the iconic Collins Street, 5 pm (1955), a view of rush hour in post-war Melbourne. Set in a bleak palette of browns and greys, it was a comment on the conformity of everyday life, with all figures looking almost identical. A related painting The Bar (1954) was modeled on Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, and satirized the Six o’clock swill, a social ritual arising from the early closing of Australian bars. Most of these early paintings and drawings were unmistakably satirical comments against the Australian Dream, either being set in the newly expanding post-war suburbia or taking the life of those who lived there as their subject matter.

In 2007, another Brack Painting — The Old Time (looking like a scene out of the hilarious Australian film Strictly Ballroom) — broke that record, selling for $3.3 million.

There is a little more information about John Brack at Wikipedia, and also some more of his works at the ArtCyclopedia.

If you enjoyed this post or the Bulletin generally, please consider buying me a pint

For my birthday again this year I received a subscription to a Beer of the Month Club (three months' worth), and I received my first package just before the new year. I already mentioned the Pickled Santa from Ridgeway Brewing; the other three beers are:

• Christian Moerlein's Over the Rhine (OTR) Ale
• Wild Goose Brewery's Oatmeal Stout
• Brasserie Duyck's Jenlain Noël

I'll write about them as I drink them.

December was a busy time for SevenPack.  You may have noticed a ridiculous amount of info posted over the last 30 days, and I hope you were able to keep up.  Turns out I had a difficult time doing just that because I’m finally getting around to trying the last of the BOMC beers that arrived over 2 weeks ago.   Like Ben said earlier, this month’s offerings were a bit “ehhh” but overall the beers were enjoyable, so I can’t complain.

This clear, golden-yellow lager hails from Croatia and is an interpretation of a Czech-style pilsner.  The nose is very pronounced, boasting sweet grape tones and a slight metallic twinge.  The taste is rather mild but I’m happy to say it has more than just the “beer” flavor I expected.  This beer presents itself as a tasteless liquid but then grape jam flavorings stand out about halfway through the mouth.  The taste rounds out with a combination of subtle floral and metallic undertones.  To be honest there’s not much to this beer but it kinda works in this instance.  This is a welcomed, refreshing change to the dark beers I’ve been drinking recently.  Furthermore, I can definitely see myself enjoying this beer on a hot summer day.  Maybe I’ll revisit it in approximately six months.

A near empty glass
Is my patient companion
As my patience wanes

Written by Captain Hops.

Thing of the Day: Belly Up to the Bar: Dining at New York City’s Top Restaurants without Reservation(s)

I picked up a copy of the latest issue of TAPS magazine, a photo contest prize giver, this morning while we were out at Chapters. Well worth the $6.95 I paid and, frankly, so well worth it I thought I would write a post setting out why. This may seem an obvious motivation for a blogger on a Saturday afternoon but there are a number of points that should be made about this magazine and how it is developing. And I make them not, as Canadians too often do, in relation to other things Canadian but in relation to the pantheon of world magazines.

• The Audience Is Defined: I have a sense that TAPS is getting close to a sweet spot that not enough other beer magazines have sought. It is not just a shill for large breweries. It also appears to have abandoned the beer ponging brand hugging chuggers that might be attracted to the incredibly well titled magazine Beer which I had a disappointed look at in the fall of 2007. But it also forsaken the extreme fringe focus of a periodical... or rather movement... like Beer Advocate magazine which I reviewed last summer. I think that this middling ground among interested beer buyers is where curiosity meets mobility and is the best bet for growth.
• Solid Production Quality: If beer is somewhat recession insulated, so are magazines. But if I am going out to treat myself on a special brew or read, I want it to be well made. And TAPS is. Heavy stock glossy paper shows off the thoughtful photography. Plenty of white space in the layout and an attractive font give it an easy feel. But these production choices also makes the typos stick out a bit more: page 8's use of "one's" for the plural faces the spelling "Itallian" in a heading. Blogs can handle that sort of thing. Glossy quarterlies can't.
• Don't Fear The Macro: Being a Maritimer, I am aware that Moosehead is a decent regional brewers of the sorts of beers I wouldn't buy anymore. But it is good that TAPS includes an interview with Andrew Oland, the owner of Canada's largest remaining independent brewery. It balances the more niche topics like the three fine food and beer articles. And the stories on specific beer bars and brewpubs is good - that is where people meet their beer as often as not.

What would I do to improve the magazine further? First, ditch the national bubble and the gold stars while still keeping the overall tone Canadian. That odd hint of neediness inherent in the Great White North shines through the sub-heading "Canada's Beer Magazine" as well as statements like "[o]ur writers are the best in Canada on the subject of beer." They do very well and I have a very merry emailing relationship with many of them but there are at least a few other good and more experienced Canadian beer writers we all can name. How about being comfortable enough in your skin just say that TAPS features some of Canada's more interesting beer writers? I can live with that.

Second, seek out the stories that might be unlike the ones readers see on the web or in All About Beer or Beers of the World, the closest US and UK comparables. Bill White's feature on his trip to Germany was fine but it is a bit like Roger Protz's recent feature on a trip to Germany in All About Beer and, worse, not likely anything 1% of the readership might ever experience. How about a regular column about making the dash south or even to the next province for the weekend or just to fill the trunk with those thousands of beers we cannot buy around the corner, something that is actually the great pastime and obsession of the Canuck strain of beer hound.

Lastly, but on a related note, has Premier Gourmet or any other border beer shop been asked to place an ad? And - while we are at it - where are the other craft brewery and provincial beer lobby association ads? An effort like TAPS is putting out needs their support as part of the larger beer scene available to the Canadian beer fan. Sadly, we seem too often to be a culture that does not truly believe a rising tide raises all boats in these sorts of situations. So, if you control that sort of ad placement decision and are reading this, consider yourself smacked in the ear if you are not supporting TAPS.

All in all, TAPS is certainly a magazine I can support even if it does not necessarily speak to me on each and every page because it aims at describing where the beer scene is in Canada now. Sure, adding a little coincidental web interactivity would be nice as well as a review that might give you a heads up that the beer in question might not be worth your time. These things should come with the maturity and accompanying security of market share that TAPS deserves.

Do you know where in the beer world this photo was taken?

Leave your answer as a comment. And, as always, you are free to comment on the photo even if you don’t have an answer.

Sorry, no clue this week. Every clue I tried and then plugged into Google yielded the location way to easily.