Beer And The Young At Heart

by Dan Hodge

Note: This article requires a little disclaimer. In no way am I promoting nor do I advocate underage drinking, however it does occur and when nobody gets hurt some of the occasions are funny.  

That being said, personal experience is the best way to start. Being exposed to the draft and a possible trip to Viet Nam caused my first flagrant violation of New Jersey’s minimum drinking age of 21. New York’s Staten Island with its much more sensible 18 minimum was only ashort hop over the Outerbridge Crossing and thus weekly trips to quench our thirst helped to ease my and my friends’ angst over the uncertain future ahead.

But the love of beer did not always require a trip to Staten Island. Perpetually seated on a curb at the rear

of our own local liquor store was “Mooch”, an elderly wino ostensibly paid a meager stipend to keep the

parking lot clean and who, for a pint of Night Train or the equivalent, would enter the store and purchase our six packs of Pabst. Nobody in the store ever questioned why on weekends he’d sometimes buy as many as a dozen or more six-packs (as well as his daily two or three pints of Night Train).

In 1966 my mummers band was engaged to perform on a whistle stop train ride for the unsuccessful US Senate campaign of Warren Wilentz. Each car on the train was provisioned with large coolers of Ballantine Beer, XXX Ale, Ballantine Real Draft and Ballantine Bock. Nobody was doing much supervising (imagine that today!) so those of us who had not yet reached legal age could help ourselves to any amount of Ballantine we wanted.

However, being conscientious musicians, we had to police ourselves in order to execute a respectable

performance, but saw no reason why all that Ballantine should just lie there getting cold only to be gobbled up by the train cleaning crew. So when the gig was over we detrained with our instruments in one hand and our “empty” instrument cases in the other. It’s quite a struggle to climb down off a train with a baritone sax hanging off your neck and trying to carry a baritone sax case full of full Ballantine cans but we managed and nobody wondered or cared why we didn’t just encase the instruments beforehand. That train ride saved a couple of trips to Staten Island but prevented Mooch from earning several bottles of Night Train!

My mother-in-law once took her Brownie troop to visit the Iroquois Brewery in Buffalo, certainly a change from visiting a barnyard or other usual Brownie destinations. That excursion didn’t include a stop at the tasting room, but closer to home another class trip did that and more.

Some years ago I read an account in the Star-Ledger of an incident in Lakewood, New Jersey, home to a huge Hassidic Jewish community. It seems that a debating team from the local Yeshiva had won their debate and as a reward, their bus driver, himself a Hassidic rabbi, thought it a splendid idea to stop the bus, pop into a liquor store and buy several cases of Rheingold to show his appreciation for their debating skills. They’d have gotten away with it, too, if the victorious debaters hadn’t started throwing the empty cans out of the bus windows. Oy Vey!

During our first visit to Munich’s Hofbrauhaus, my wife and I were astounded to find a group of high schoolers sitting next to us and going over their homework while downing mass steins of maibock. Lucky for them Germany’s beer drinking age is a liberal 16. Staten Island would be a hell of a trip!

Behind the house in Colonia where I grew up is “the creek”, a small stream where many dams were built,

many frogs were caught, and many feet were soaked and frozen when we stepped on too thin ice. It was also a place where my father would occasionally throw bundles of twigs or leaves during yard clean up. While doing so one day, a glint of something shiny caught his eye, and brushing away some leaves and undergrowth, he discovered two brand new sixpacks of Schaefer party bottles.

I know they weren’t mine (I was over twenty one by that time anyway and had no need to hide them near

 a creek), but to this day none of my three younger brothers has claimed ownership. However, later that

evening their mouths must have been watering as the watched Pop sitting at the picnic table and enjoying a few Schaefers in place of his usual Iron City.

Previous Beer My Way articles have made reference to the healthful aspects of Wiedenmayer’s beer, but their late nineteenth century advertising is worth repeating as a testimony to beer and the young at heart. The print ad showed a picture of a toddler seated on a chamber pot , grinning happily, and saying “I drank George Wiedenmayer’s beer”. I’m certain that MADD would have something to say about such an ad in 2024.

Only now that they’re in their thirties and now that Farcher’s Grove, our local watering hole has long been

closed can I relate my experience of stopping in after work and after ordering a Hacker-Pschorr Oktoberfest, and having the bartender tell me “this one’s on the guys at the end of the bar”. Raising my glass in that direction to say thanks, I found myself looking at my neighbors’ kids, who were about seventeen at the time. Did I rat them out? Did I tell their fathers? Did I decline their

offer?  NO! I did none of those things. I did what barroom etiquette demands. I bought them a round in

return.

Not too far from Farcher’s and also long gone was a tavern that did a huge Sunday morning business. As an

added inducement to stop in they even kept copies of local church bulletins on the bar so that thirsty

husbands could bring proof of church attendance home to their doubting wives.

One Sunday, a friend of mine, feeling a bit of religious zeal and with skeptical admiration from his wife, decided to take his three year old son “to church”. Armed with a bulletin from St. Anne’s, he returned home and would have pulled it off if the suspicious wife hadn’t found a stack of Krueger’s coasters in the son’s pocket. He’s still nursing the lump on his head.

That’s it for now. It’s time to go have a pint and peruse the dozens of fake driver’s licenses displayed on the wall of the Gaslight, testimony to the Young at Heart being denied their beer! 

Cheers!

Dan

 "Beer is Only Rented"

..... is a line all beer drinkers have heard in public restrooms, along with "I've got to tap a kidney".  Previous "Beer My Way" articles have all dealt with the culture of beer as it relates to history, music, travel, health and other positive aspects of America's favorite beverage, in addition to its actual ingestion. However, as we all know, ingestion of enough of it soon causes a definite need to relieve oneself and therefore a need for an article about that necessary

requirement of drinking beer.

One of the biggest beer drinking states is Wisconsin, fittingly, home of the world's largest urinal, described in the June 2022 Beer My Way article, "Big Beers". It's prodigious size earns it arightful place in the proud history of New Glarus, but no matter how large it's still only a "single".

The tremendous troughs in the bleachers at the old Polo Grounds accommodated many more Schaefer drinkers than New Glarus' claim to fame could ever hope to. But even those lengthy troughs paled by comparison to the temporary comfort station set up at Broad and Washington for the New Year's Day Philadelphia Mummers Parade that I proudly marched in.

We Mummers like to drink beer and the Mummers Parade lasts from 8am to well after dark, creating a need for such a convenience at the approximate halfway point. But mummers also wear huge feathered backpieces, making the use of porta-johns impractical and which would be too time consuming to remove. Hence the erection of a four sided, roofless, plywood structure with V-shaped troughs on all four sides running downhill into the street. Thus, parade participants were able to unload rented beer without delaying the parade.

Needless to say, even during the glory days of the parade in the 1950's and '60's, there weren't a lot of spectators seated on the curb at Broad and Washington.

Under the bar urinals, the most practical way to tap a kidney, enabled beer drinkers in pre-prohibition Pennsylvania to save time and energy by doing so without leaving the bar. Although I like history and tradition, this is one aspect of beer history I'm glad is gone.

Some tavern owners thoughtfully place the sports pages above the urinals in their men's rooms so their patrons can check out the scores while performing their beer-induced bodily functions. Such thoughtfulness is particularly useful to the sufferer of an enlarged prostate who has not yet discovered Flo-Max!

Another men's room diversion was a little pinwheel in the urinal which, if the kidney tapper had a good aim, would spin and reveal his fortune. Thirty years ago, my little boy loved this attraction at the Dutchman's Brauhaus near Long Beach Island, NJ. The Dutchman's serves a great selection of on tap German beer, which alone is reason enough for

a visit in addition to the outstanding German and Jersey Shore cuisine.

After a day on the beach, my wife and I stopped in last September after a hiatus of almost ten years. I was happy to see that some things never change: the little pinwheels were still there. The reader should know that I had three huge steins of a variety of beers from Germany, but only I know how many times my fortune was told!

Male beer drinkers are not the only sex requiring tapping of the beer-filled kidney. Two examples of distaff beer renters were experienced by my male-only mummers band. This past spring, while on the annual St. Patrick's Day Mummers Pub Crawl, several band members, dodging the line for the men's room, went out into the alley at the rear of the pub on the latest stop, and were immediately greeted by a row of pub-crawling ladies who apparently had the same idea.

And in Dusseldorf, Germany, while waiting for a parade to begin, we were amazed to witness an all girl band emerge from their restroomless bus, squat down, and begin to examine the tires in broad daylight. When ya gotta go...ya

gotta go.

Eliminating rented beer offers a venue for bragging rights, as in the two Texans, who after downing a dozen cans of Lone Star, found themselves peeing over the side of a bridge. One braggart remarked to his buddy "Gawd, that water's sure cold", to which his partner replied "Yeah.... and deep, too!"       

In addition to bragging rights, emptying the bladder of rented beer offers beer drinkers a great opportunity for political commentary. Shortly after September 11th when the French, who have contributed nothing to the betterment of the world since Lafayette, refused to allow our planes in their airspace, craft beer lovers at the Gaslight found replicas of the French flag in the same location as the Dutchman's pinwheels.

That's all for now.....time to tap a kidney!

Cheers

Dan

Accidentally Discovered Treasures

by Dan Hodge

In my quest for the perfect pint I have visited over 350 breweries and brewpubs. Almost always, they were with a definite destination in mind, but occasionally some were discovered purely by accident, sometimes even on the way to a different brewery. That being said, I’d like to expound on a few of those discoveries, their beer, and how they were discovered, with special emphasis on my wife’s eagle eye.

 Most recently she and I were on our way to the Good Nature Brewery in Hamilton, N.Y., when she spotted a sign in the middle of nowhere for the Foothill Brewery and Hop Farm. Naturally, I stopped and sampled the outstanding brews they offered. The brewery is run by a husband and wife team who operated a hop farm, which eventually led to fulfilling his long desire to own a brewery. It’s a very cozy little place with many old local artifacts complementing the decor. Their flagship beer is Kung Fu Ale, and when I asked why, Kate, the very personable wife, related how, when they were getting started and she had made some minor error on the computer, her husband jokingly asked “Kate, you No Good F—- Up! What did you do?” Hence, Kung Fu. The original destination, Good Nature paled by comparison.

  Also in New York State my wife’s superior vision enabled stops at the Lunkenheimer Brewery in Weedsport (LOVE that name), the Battle Hill Brewery in Fort Ann, the Hopshire Brewery in Freeville, the Hothouse Brewery in Cicero, the Stumblin’ Monkey Brewery in Victor, and the Erie Canal Brewery in Canastota, which has been visited many times, since its only a fifteen minute drive from our lake house in Sullivan. All of those places were found by accident on our way to somewhere else, all produce some very good beers and all would have been missed if not for the eagle eye of my wife.

 However, her “nose for brews” is not limited to New York State. With some time to kill before boarding our ship for a river cruise to Normandy, we were walking through Paris to visit the Eiffel Tower. Amazingly, she spotted the Frog XVI Brewery , whose Burton Ale rated five stars on my rating system. If I had to choose just one beer to drink for the rest of my life that one might well be it.

 A very interesting accidental discovery was made by me when our ship docked in Bratislava, Slovakia on a Danube River Christmas Cruise. As my wife was preparing to rest her eagle eyes for a brief nap, I looked across the river and spotted a large barge with a sign hanging over it that said “Pivovar”. Any serious beer man knows that “pivovarl” is Slavic for brewery, so with directions from the cruise director and help from a trolley bus, I managed to cross the river and walk a half mile to the barge. Upon entering, I asked if they did flights, to which the man behind the bar replied “Vas iss dis flights?” I explained that it was to try all three brews they offered. A minute later, three tall glasses were placed in front of me and when they were finished I asked “how much?’, to which the response was “No, you vas only tryink”. Can’t beat that!.

I’m not much for amusement park rides, so I avoid them, especially ones that involve height, so some years ago when the kids were small and we visited Action Park( some called it Traction Park because of the injuries that could be sustained while “enjoying” the rides), I opted to wait for my wife and kids to get off a waterslide, found an empty picnic table and sat down to watch people scraping their knees and elbows and breaking wrists and ankles while riding downhill on a cement runway on what looked like unsteerable creepers. I then noticed off to my left a small building which housed the now defunct Vernon Valley Brewery. A couple of pints greatly enhanced the pleasure watching the medical response team attend to the victims of the “rides”.

 An auto trip on old Route 66 from St. Louis to Albuquerque afforded visits at several accidentally discovered breweries. After visiting the St. Louis Arch and walking back to our car, some recently started street construction forced us to take a slight detour on Morgan Street, allowing us to walk directly in front of the appropriately named Morgan Street Brewery and enjoy a refreshing flight and pint in the sweltering St. Louis heat. Later that afternoon, my wife’s superior vision spotted a winery in St. James, Missouri at which she desired to stop. As a way of thanking her for her excellent brewery scoping vision (she doesn’t drink beer), I ungrudgingly pulled into the winery parking lot, only to find out I was parked directly in front of the Public House Brewery, which shares the lot. She went to the winery. Guess where I went?

 The Route 66 trip also include stops at the 6 Cars Brewery in Amarillo, the Anthem Brewery in Oklahoma City, the Bosque Brewery (Scotia Scotch Ale was memorable), in Bernadillo, New Mexico and the Quarter Celtic Brewpub in Albuquerque. To be honest, the above weren’t exactly discovered accidentally. Rather, they popped up when asking Alexa “Take me to the nearest brewery!”

Traveling around the Finger Lakes of Central New York to find breweries isn’t actually accidental, either. Since there seems to be a brewery every half mile or so, stopping in one or twenty can’t really be called an accident.

But what definitely was an accident , however, was visiting the Central Market House in York, Pennsylvania, where I had spent many happy Saturday mornings with my grandparents, and finding that in addition to the sausages, scrapple, shoe fly pie and other Pennsylvania Dutch goodies, the market now offered the Mud hook Brewery, accessible either from the street or from inside the market house and conveniently located near the rest rooms and a stand featuring cheeses and soft pretzels.

Two of my favorite accidentally discovered breweries are at almost opposite ends of the world from each other. On a trip to the Canadian Rockies we got lost trying to find our hotel in Edmonton, Alberta, so with safety in mind, I pulled into the nearest parking lot to read a map and get our bearings. While my bride was using her superior skills at map reading, I happened to look up and notice that I had parked directly in front of  the front door of Brewster’s Brewpub. As it was now lunch time, the map reading was tabled and we chose to eat there and down a flight or two. There were excellent food and brews to be had,  but what made the stop even better was when she found out I wrote for Beer Nexus.com, the very pleasant manager presented me with a 12 pack sampler of their beers and informed us that we no longer needed the map because our hotel was just around the corner.

 And in Salzburg, Austria, after an exhaustive day-long walking tour around the beautiful city, dog tired, we decided to take a different trolley bus route back to our hotel. I couldn’t wait for a hot shower and clean sheets to rest up for the next day’s Austrian adventure. However, that idea was put on hold when the bus driver announced that we had arrived at the stop closest to our hotel and we should disembark. So we did…..right in front of Kastner Schenke brewpub!

Happening upon a brewery when least expecting it is a great pleasure, and with so many opening right here in New Jersey almost weekly, it’s possible to put the key in the ignition, start driving and find one without trying. Especially if you have a wife, like mine, who has eagle eyes!

Cheers, 

Dan

 Troubleshooting Beer

by Dan Hodge

Recently, I bought a new toaster, and with nothing else to do, I actually started leafing through the little instruction/warranty booklet that came with it. As always, there was a page entitled “Troubleshooting”, providing tips and pointers on how to

solve any problems with the appliance, the first being “toaster does not heat up” and offering the recommended solution “be sure that it’s plugged in”.  Obviously, this would seem like a no-brainer to any sensible person, but upon reflection I realized that probably 50% of the US population would actually NEED that tip in order to have toast for breakfast.

Further evidence of this was the helpful “tip” I read in an article about planning for an auto trip vacation which recommended that the gas tank be full before setting out. Not to be forgotten was the “tip” provided by the booklet for my new snow blower advising me to “don’t put hands into chute or under machine while machine is running”. Without that valuable advisement, one could quickly become fingerless.

With those tips in mind, I realized that with all the beer I’ve consumed in my life, I was never provided with any tips to make make my consumption more pleasurable, other than instructions on how to use a church key on an early Pabst can in my

collection of breweriana. Therefore, I figured that 50% of the population might possibly need assistance in drinking beer and herewith proudly present “Beer My Way’s”  “Troubleshooting Beer Guide”, listing all the problems with and recommended solutions to enjoying a brew.

     PROBLEM                                             SOLUTION

1.   Beer is too cold                                      Let it warm up

2.   Beer is not cold enough                         Put it back in the fridge

3.   Not enough beer                                    Buy or make some more

4.  Too much beer                                        Drink it faster

5.   Can or bottle doesn’t pour properly       Pop the top on the can or remove bottle cap

6.  Home-brew is  under carbonated            Mix it 50/50 with Michelob Ultra Light

7.  Home-brew is over carbonated             Make container as cold as possible, stand it in a sanitize pail and open

8. Local brewpub makes bad beer                Don’t go there

9. Local brewpub makes great beer             Go there often

10. Closest brewpub is too far                      Move closer.

      from home                                               

11. Case of beer is too heavy to carry           Buy 12 packs.

    to carry                                                

12. 12 Pack is too heavy too carry                 Buy 6 packs,                                 

13. Prohibition makes a comeback                 Learn to home-brew

14. Doctor tells you to cut out beer                 Find a new doctor

15. Can’t decide between cans

    or bottles of same beer                               Buy both

16. Michelob Ultra is the only beer available    Buy Coca-Cola

17. Blizzard prohibits driving to liquor store       Walk there instead

18. Too long a line at beer festivals                  Look for a shorter line

19. Not enough porta-johns at a beer featival   Find a ttree

20. You lose your love of beer                           See a psychiatrist

Hopefully, these handy tips will ensure a trouble free, happy life for beer lovers. 

Cheers!

Dan

"The Local Taproom"

by Dan Hodge

A disappearing entity in our fast changing New Jersey suburban climate is the neighborhood tap room. What was once a mainstay of the city and inner suburban landscape is being replaced by chains catering to the after work crowd with "drink specials", impersonal barmaids in short shorts, and menus with pictures on them.

The drinking establishments that are still locally owned and operated have, for the most part, become "sports bars", with 27 televisions turned to 16 different games, all competing for attention with the juke box, which is usually played at a decibel level exceeding that of a 747's engines during run up.

Both of these types of saloons offer the usual "variety" of draught beers such as "Nocarb Bud Lite Ice Draft ", which are served in a mug so encrusted with ice as to completely obliterate whatever minimal taste they might have once had. A beer lover's delight these places certainly are not. The relatively recent appearance of brewpubs and "beer bars" have somewhat offset the absence of local taverns, but they are too rare to solve the problem of having a couple brews and still being able to efficiently get home .

While the traditional neighborhood bar was not exactly a beer fan's heaven, there was something very pleasant about sitting in its dim , cool atmosphere, sipping a Piel's or Rheingold from the standard seven ounce glass, watching the Mets or Yanks(certainly not BOTH) and being able to request a refill in a normal tone of voice from the bartender at the far end of the bar.

In my neighborhood we had Farcher's Grove, which offered even more. While not exactly a neighborhood tap room, it was a "tap room for the neighborhood". In addition to the bar, it was home to several German American clubs, and offered a catering hall, picnic grove and soccer field. But the bar itself had all the attributes of a local and more.

Upon entering ,you were immediately greeted with the smell of bratwurst and old sauerkraut left over from the previous night's "Fest". There was always an excuse for a fest at Farcher's: Oktoberfest, Springfest, Holiday fest and Fest for no particular reason. As you seated yourself at the bar a secondary aroma assaulted the nostrils as someone emerged from the men's room: the unmistakable scent of stale beer and mothballs piled into the floor length urinals. When the olfactory senses were sufficiently stimulated you checked out the tap handles and happily realized you

weren't goig to be forced to chose from Bud or Coor's Light, because Farcher's had Dortmunder, Beck's, one or two other German lagers, Paulaner Weissbier and  on tap all year round.

You made your selection and here the real fun began. Since the bartenders were older Teutonic men who didn't look particularly good in short shorts and tight tank tops, they had to rely on a more time-honored method of generating tips: giving away the owner's beer. It was sometimes possible to lay a twenty on the bar, drink three or four glasses of great German beer and find that you still had $18.50 remaining from which to leave your gratuity. The business was

owned by fifty or so members of something called the Elizabeth Sports Club, who, according to the bartenders, were so busy stealing from each other, they didn't notice how much the employees were stealing from them. Bad for them, good for the thirsty patron!

Some of these losses were recouped by the"Youth Movement". Other taverns in the area ignored a whole marketing strategy that Farcher's took advantage of, that being the sale of beer to minors. Whereas some bars serve underage patrons in uniform and justify it  by saying "If he's old enough to fight for his country, he's old enough to drink in my bar", it seemed as though sometimes Farcher's took the attitude that "If he's good enough to get a "B" in Social

Studies, he's good enough to get a beer in here"!

One  promotion at Farcher's stands out in my memory. To increase the sale of Paulaner Weissbier, the product was poured into beautiful, traditional German weissbier glasses bearing the Paulaner logo and a gold rim around the lip. Taking lessons from the bartenders, the customers began to steal them in great numbers. To cut down on the thefts, the management began to require a three dollar deposit for a glass of this frothy stuff, but also offered them for sale at ten dollars per. Even though stealing them now cost three dollars, an astute drinker could easily determine that by doing so he could save himself seven dollars off the purchase price!

Unfortunately such shenanigans eventually contributed to the demise of this great institution. Even though a plastics factory now occupies the site, a little piece remains close to me physically. A few days before it was bulldozed, I ventured into the picnic grove, dug out all the hostas and rhododendrons I could find and transplanted them into my yard where all summer long they remind me of a great neighborhood stop. Sometimes, when the atmospheric

conditions are just right, I can still hear the oompahs! 

CHEERS!

Dan

“Don We Now Our Beer Apparel" 

by Dan Hodge

In addition to drinking it, beer lovers can evaluate it, read and write about it, attend festivals and tastings,

sing about it, watch movies about it and collect all sorts of beer related items and advertising. This month I’d like to devote a little space to another possibility for beer fans: wearing it!

Basically there are two types of beer duds: apparel made strictly for advertising purposes and clothing that

serves the practical purpose of aiding one in his consumption of the beverage. The former is a more

evident usage so we’ll start with articles of clothing that we see almost every day.

Perhaps the most common is the beer T-shirt, promoting almost any brand of beer imaginable, from

Alaskan Amber to Zywiec Polish beer. When bought at a novelty clothing store or brewery gift shop they can usually be purchased with the proper fit in mind but when given away, as most are, at a beer promotional event, they are invariably distributed only in “X large”, possibly because the brewery rep wants to help recipients to hide their beer bellies. This is not an attractive offer for a slightly built girl of tiny stature, but if she dons the free shirt she creates another article of beer clothing, the Beer Tent!

Next on the most commonly seen list are beer hats of several kinds. Baseball caps displaying the Brooklyn

lager or Bud logo are seen everywhere but generally one must attend a beer event to see other specialty pieces of beer headgear such as the combination knitwear and flattened beer can watch cap or the large and boxy helmet style made from empty 12 pack cartons. Both of these fashion statements are available on line, the last at the bargain basement price of $20 plus $7.9shipping and handling.

To properly clothe the opposite end of the anatomy from the head we have beer shoes, again offering

footwear for any occasion from canvas tennis shoes with a Pabst Blue Ribbon logo for casual wear, to the

high end ladies’ dress shoe featuring spike heels fashioned to look like upside down tall neck bottles for

really dressy occasions.

A variation on this exquisite design is the “pilsner glass complete with head” spike heel, particularly popular at the annual banquet of dedicated Walmart shoppers. Beer socks, both generic and brand specific, for

everyday use and stockings for the spike heels with a small beer glass pattern are available for those wishing to complete the lower half of the beer ensemble.

Beer walking shorts, beer lounging pants, beer pajamas and beer dresses advertising brands or just generic

cans ,bottles and glasses are nice additions to a beer wardrobe and serve to put the rest of the world on

notice that a beer lover is passing by.

Fourth floor! This floor for men’s undergarments and ladies’ lingerie! No male beer geek should be without at least one pair of beer boxer shorts, (I have three, thanks to my kids and Father’s Day) and certainly a

must for the distaff malt beverage fan is the beer thong proclaiming “I’m Here for the Beer….Beer Goddess!”.

Also for the ladies, a more modest beer nightie makes for a restful night’s sleep and, for the gents, “A” shirts, more commonly referred to as “wife beaters” or “Guinea T’s” can be had with either beer logos or inane questions like “Where’s my Beer Bitch?”

To complete any outfit, accessories are always necessary and here again, the beer geek has numerous

options. Belts, ties, tie pins and clasps promoting various beers are practical indeed. Nothing like a Miller

High Life belt to hold up your Budweiser walk shorts or a Yuengling tie clasp to keep your Genny Cream tie in place. Beer watches and sunglasses are other practical examples of beer promos.

Jewelry is not to be forgotten. One website offers over 3000 styles of beer cuff links. I am partial to the tiny Red Stripe beer bottle earrings I found on another.

If it gets chilly, beer windbreakers, scarves, hoodies and sweatshirts help to keep out the cold. My Buffalo lager sweatshirt is perfect for raking leaves but my “Brew Crew” hoodie with my Molson scarf is more appropriate for shoveling snow. And it’s never too early to start appreciating beer. Beer themed “onesies” are perfect for keeping infants warm and toasty.

The above wardrobe items, while attractive and practical do nothing to enhance the drinking of beer, so it’s on to the most USEFUL applications of beer dress.

Previous” Beer My Way” articles have made reference to The Drinking Hat, a piece of headgear holding two cans with a tube extending to the mouth allowing for gravity fed, hands free drinking from the top of one’s head. Optional accessories for this hat are the beer holster, holding one to six reserve cans, worn around the waist, or the twelve can “ammo pack”, worn over the shoulder like an infantryman’s bandolier of extra bullets. The Drinking Hat itself may be purchased “no frills” or , for an extra charge, with a built in electric sign that enables the wearer to express his opinion on the beer or anything else at all, similar to the destination sign on a bus. For those unfortunates who don’t own a Drinking Hat and have to use their hands, the wearing of beer gloves keeps the beer cold and the hands warm.

An appropriate item for Halloween is a beer keg costume with a working tap helmet and pump. I only

saw this interesting piece of apparel on line so I can’t testify as to whether or not it actually works, but if it

does, why would a beer enthusiast need any other clothing?

As practical as is the keg costume, so is the beer bra which turns any A cup into a double D and dispenses

beer by means of a tap and spigot. I haven’t seen this in operation either, but I imagine that as the beer flows, the double Ds would revert back to As, causing anyone appreciating the cleavage to stare in wonder as it disappears.

While some refer to beer koozies as “beer condoms”, they’re not really worn and so shouldn’t be mentioned

here. But what occasionally IS worn is a REAL beer condom. I have in my collection of breweriana a Rogue

Dead Guy Ale condom. The name seems like kind of an anomaly, though, since “Dead Guy” is an entirely inappropriate name for those occasions when the condom might actually be worn!

But that’s enough for now. A glance at my Pabst Blue Ribbon watch tells me it’s time to don my Yuengling windbreaker and depart for band rehearsal 

A Guy Walks Into A Bar  

by Dan Hodge

Thousands of the world’s funniest jokes have started with that line. The guy may walk in alone or he may be accompanied by a horse, a midget, an alligator or a duck, but whether solo or with friend he always makes for a good story. However, you don’t need a joke to relate barroom shenanigans because the real

characters and events that are everyday occurrences in the local taproom provide far more laughs than the

manufactured jokes.

Having spent more than an hour or two soaking up the ambiance and suds in local taverns , I’ve seen

some things and met some characters that back up this argument and would like to share a few with  

readers of “Beer My Way”.

The nicknames of pub patrons rival the colorful names given to Mafiosi in originality and appropriateness.

Over the years I’ve shared brews with such UNfamous people as Tommy Tow Truck, Chris the Cabdriver,

Sudsy, The U-Boat Commander, the Rebel, Bulldozer Freddie and the "Perfessor" (Not to be confused with

Professor John Sweeney of Seton Hall and piping fame. This prof was so named because he knew everything there was to know about anything and always made sure his drinking companions were aware of this). Allhad real names but were never referred to by them.

The nicknames  are catchy and descriptive but not only nicknames make for a good character. Often a

barroom regular will have a little idiosyncrasy that sets him apart from the rest of the drinking field. I have

seen people bark, fall off their barstools, weep and wail, talk to the TV as well as to patrons and bartenders who are unwilling to listen, and finally, in an unsuccessful attempt to attract an audience, to themselves. One guy, who used to frequent Farcher’s Grove, a famous watering hole in Union , NJ , would have whole arguments with himself, taking first one side, then the other, and never quite settling thedispute. Oblivious to the jukebox, bands, ballgames or normal two party conversations, the debate would go on night after night, fueled by shots of Jagermeister for the “pro” side and steins of Dortmunder for the “con”. Although Farcher’s has been gone these last eleven years, I’m sure the  argument still rages in a replacement pub!

The Clam Broth House in Hoboken, NJ, featured a bar which offered free clam broth, clamshells all over the

floor, and huge steins of Ruppert Knickerbocker beer , allowed no barstools and, until the mid 1970s, NO

WOMEN! The crowd was eclectic to say the least. One could belly up to the bar between a corporation lawyer on one side, a longshoreman on the other and a winoaround the bend. While enjoying a Knick one late afternoon, an Ivy League, preppy looking young lad came in, stood around looking confused before he

caught the  bartender’s eye and asked for a glass ofwater, to the astonishment of “mein host”, who responded to the request by saying “What the hell do you think this is? The public park? Have a beer!”

Another by-gone Union pub, The Spaeter Club, was a home away from home for German expatriates and

featured the inimitable Heinz Muller behind the bar who’d march around the huge circular bar to a recording of “Alte Kammaraden” rendered by the Third Panzer Division Band roaring out of the juke. One regularwore white turtleneck sweaters under his double breasted Navy blazer, and with his neatly trimmed

goatee and close cropped pate, looked exactly like his nickname, The U-Boat Commander. The Commander

was rather fond of the good old days in the Fatherlandand let everyone within earshot know it. According to

him anything German, including any mass produced German lager, was infinitely superior to anything

American, including the best craft brewed American microbrews.  He’d have no problem getting Mother

Teresa and the Pope to be at each other’s throats in no time!

Keeping with the Teutonic theme I am reminded of one of my own experiences walking into a bar. After an

overnight red eye flight with my Mummers band to Luxembourg and a visit to General Patton’s grave, we

finally arrived dog-tired at our quaint hotel in Rudesheim , Germany on the Rhine river. Most of our entourage collapsed into the comfortable accommodations to rest up for our scheduled Fasching celebration parades throughout the Rhineland . But not me!! I thought to myself,” I didn’t come to Germany to sleep. I want local color”. Ziggy, a German born Philadelphian who was our translator on the trip and who could quaff unbelievable amounts of Bitburger, had advised us prior to departure on the proper etiquette in German saloons: correct glass for brand and style of beer, keeping track of downed beers on the back of coasters and most importantly to always order two beers at a time.

The German insistence on order and being precise demanded that the beer must exactly correspond to the line on the glass with the head forming above that. Since this requires a time delay, the two at a time is a

great way to stave off future thirst. Armed with this information, I set out to find a suitable Gasthaus and

after a short walk found one that looked promising and which could have been taken from the pages of a

German travel magazine: leaded glass windows, ancient arched oak door, and painted hop vines on the

stucco front.

I could picture an elderly, portly man named Hans behind the bar, just waiting to pour me two steins of

Bischoff’s, the local pils, to be enjoyed whiled listening to the oompahs. With eager anticipation I pushed

open the door and entered while thinking “I’m getting a leg up on my resting companions. I’m gonna see the REAL Germany before they do!”. I eased up to the barand had my dreams dashed when I observed the

innkeeper wearing a kilt and T-shirt that proclaimed “Drink Guinness”. I had wandered into the local Irish

pub. The only thing missing was Crosby on the jukebox.

Closer to home, two great barroom stories have been handed down to me by my father and grandfather,

both dealing with Rudy’s, a small bar in Newark’s Vailsburg section run by a Mrs. Posdech, who my

grandfather insisted upon calling  “Mrs. Poopdeck”. From the the 1940s through the mid 1960s the annual

“Miss Rheingold Contest” was a high point in metropolitan area tavern life. At one point the number of votes cast for Miss Rheingold were surpassed only by the numbers cast for President of the United States.

Customers could vote for their favorite as often as they wished at any establishment that sold Rheingold.

One of the regulars in Rudy’s was Mary Duffy, a local gal who liked her Rheingold. In fact she liked it so

much that another regular thought it would be a spectacular idea to initiate a write-in campaign for Mrs.

Duffy, an idea greeted with much enthusiasm by the rest of the patrons.

Happily the Rheingolds went down as the ballot box was stuffed, and though  Mary did not become Miss

Rheingold of 1951, an honor bestowed upon Elise Gammon, she did garner more votes than Miss Gammon in Rudy’s, one of the larger polling precincts!

Also a fixture at Rudy’s was “Hooley” , a diminutive Irishman who sustained life on a diet of shots and beers and who had an unequalled talent to instigate fights when he was in his cups, which was usually

twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. Never actually getting into the brawls, he would sit quietly in

his starched collar and tie and start them. One snowy evening, as Hooley was being particularly obnoxious,

my father stopped in and was asked by Mrs. Poopdeck if he would be so kind as to drive him home. (In her

words, “Please get him the hell out of here”).

After a brief protest Hooley acquiesced to my father’s offer of a ride, and wipers blasting snow off the

windshield, my father proceeded west on Mt. Vernon Place about five blocks to the corner of Reynolds Place, where Hooley lived. Pop dropped him off on the corner and instead of turning around, he turned north intothe one-way Reynolds Place for two blocks before turning east on Woodbine Avenue for five blocks and then heading two blocks south on one-way KerriganBoulevard in order to return to his parking spot on Mt. Vernon Place, in front of Rudy’s and headed in thedirection of home.

Unbeknownst to him, Hooley, after disembarking from the car, saw a golden opportunity and quickly boarded the #54 Public Service bus, heading east on Mt. Vernon Place and thus was able to beat Pop back by about four blocks worth of time. My father reentered, anticipating a couple of freebies from Mrs. Poopdeck for his services, only to find Hooley, seated on hisusual stool, arguing over the recent Eisenhower- Stevenson election campaign. That evening Hooley didn’t hit the bricks until closing time, my father having chalked one up to experience and Mrs. Poopdeck having waved the white flag of surrender!

Walking into a bar can provide some tremendous laughs, but so can walking out. Some of those I’ll save for a later column. 

Cheers, 

Dan

“Leaving on a Bad Note" 

by Dan Hodge

“A guy walks into a bar”…..the opening line of a thousand jokes. But for the thousands who walk in,

there’s never a mention of those who eventually must walk (or crawl) back out, so I’d like to devote a little

space to leaving a bar.

Most responsible beer folk and drinkers of other adult beverages usually just pay their tabs, make their goodbyes and leave the premises as if they were exiting a bakery, drugstore or any other business enterprise. But leaving a tavern is not always done in such a routine manner. Indeed, over indulgence in the products offered sometimes make for far more dramatic exits.

Every old western always showed someone leaving a saloon by being punched through the swinging doors or

front window, but one need not return to the glory days of the Old West to observe such athletic departures. On

my first return to Buffalo, NY after my marriage to celebrate Thanksgiving with her family, my new wife and I decided to take an early morning walk around her old neighborhood, heavily blue-collar working class and Polish, with one or two tap rooms on every corner. As we were passing by the appropriately named Stash’s Bar & Grill we were almost hit by the flying body of a third shift foundry worker who had stopped for a few boilermakers after work on the beautiful holiday morn. He was propelled by a large man wearing an apron who could only be Stash, himself, and who was issuing the command “Ged the @#%$!%$ oud an dunt gom beck no more”.

An even better example of the bum’s rush occurred at my 1980’s local, The Swiss Chalet. When an arrogant

patron decided to vent his displeasure at being “cut off” by throwing his change at gentlemanly bartender Charley Cybulski.  Sixty year old Charley vaulted over the bar, grabbed the coin tosser by the scruff of the neck and the seat of his pants and forcibly ushered him out the door to the sidewalk where the tipsy fool unwisely decided to fight back, forcing Charley to kick him to the ground. As I was attempting to pull Charley off the unhappy evictee, two other regulars pulled up directly in front of the action on the sidewalk and seeingCharley engaged in fisticuffs rather than tending bar, without so much as batting an eyelash, said “Looks like we’ll have to wait a while for our first beer”.

One leaving a bar doesn’t always have to be propelled by the innkeeper in order to land on the sidewalk. A former Gaslight (my local in South Orange, NJ) regular used the sidewalk as a landing strip after too many “Tom Specials” and after missing the three front steps upon leaving the vestibule. He didn’t lose an inordinate amount of blood, but what he did lose was about 80 proof.

A bit more speed and sobriety are required for another way of “leaving on a bad note”: running out on one’s tab, or even worse, running out on one’s tab with your neighbor’s change. Innkeepers have superior memories so this particular exit can never be used more than once in any one tavern.

Occasionally, due to over indulgence or a more serious medical problem a patron may leave the bar on a stretcher, surrounded by EMTs and tubes. Not a good way to leave , but certainly better than leaving in a body bag as has been happening lately in a nearby city. A bad way for ambulatory drinkers to leave is in handcuffs.

Again in Buffalo, after my wife’s school reunion at a posh country club some of her old classmates suggested traveling back to their old neighborhood and stopping at Casey’s Bar & Grill. It was a sultry summer night and evidently this caused some tempers to flare. While we enjoying pitchers of Old Vienna in the back room, several of the locals in the front open bar area began to argue and fight. I was fascinated that in the two hours we were there the police were summoned no less than three times and at least four debaters were escorted to the station house in handcuffs via a paddy wagon.

Way back in the 1970’s I was having a beer in a pub that had a back entrance and front door, similar to the Gaslight. The most interesting bar exit I ever saw happened there. A popular craze in the early seventies was “streaking”, or removing every last stitch of clothing and running through crowds. This sport was very popular with the college crowd. No one saw them enter from the rear, but everybody seated at the bar couldn’t help but notice the stark naked couple as they made their au naturel exit through the front door. They didn’t even stop for a quick brew and that was most likely a good thing. They didn’t appear to have their wallets on them!

Enough about leaving a bar. I much prefer to enter one. So I think I’ll pop over to the Gaslight for a pint of their excellent, not to be missed HJS cask conditioned IPA. 

Beer Stuff 

by Dan Hodge

Drinking beer is a pleasure actively pursued by millions. The “beverage of moderation” has served a valuable purpose in quenching thirst, steadying nerves, inspiring song fests, building up courage, fortifying sides in an argument, and reducing stress, to name a few. (True, there are downsides such as losing driver’s licenses and gaining waistlines, but this an article about the POSITIVE aspects of our favorite drink).

However, while actual consumption of beer is the foremost reason for its existence, the brewing industry has contributed to American culture and nostalgia in many more diverse ways through its advertising strategies. I can think of no other single American product that has so many varied and novel ways to get a company’s name before the public.  

Madison Avenue jingles are the most evident example (Schaefer …is the…one beer to have….when you’re having more than one!, eg.) but many more practical advertising ploys have been used over the years and have generated a whole new cottage industry: the searching for and collection of beer related items, popularly known as “breweriana”.

In addition to the bottles, labels, caps and cans that every beer drinker automatically obtains when he purchases beer to be consumed at home, there are scores of other items which have been used for over a hundred years to promote brewery or brand name recognition: serving trays, glassware, advertising signs , bottle and can openers, foam scrapers, match book covers, articles of clothing and head gear, tip trays, calendars, rulers, coasters and coaster holders, place mats, switch plates, clocks, postcards, lamps, record albums, sports team schedules, swizzle stick holders, statuary, beer koozies, coins, wooden cases, tap handles, and  salt and pepper shakers, all of which had

very practical household uses in addition to keeping the brewer’s name in front of your eyes. Beer truck driver’s

uniform patches, toy trucks and model railroad cars have also proudly displayed the name of a brewing company. Perhaps Rogue Brewing Company outdoes them all by distributing Rogue Ale condoms. Hopefully, the practicality of this item is on a one time only use basis and the brewery’s name is only viewed by two people at a time.

Many breweriana collectors have beautiful collections worth thousands and thousands of dollars and which are worthy of display in museums of American memorabilia. Magazines put out by collectors’ associations feature articles and beautiful pictorials highlighting collectible items of breweriana and histories of the breweries that issued them.

Businesses dealing exclusively in beer antiquity exist both traditionally and on line. Any serious collector can visit an on line breweriana website and find almost anything he wants if he is willing to pay the price, but as the title of this article suggests, the average beer guy is more into beer “stuff”. By this I mean items of a beer related nature that he just finds in his daily routine. Grabbing some new coasters off a bar, finding a Stegmaier stein at a garage sale, tripping over an old Ballantine wooden case while inspecting a basement, or even stuffing promotional literature into a bag while attending a beer festival are wonderful ways to begin a sizeable collection of beer “stuff” that anybody other

than a beer guy would think is merely junk. To be sure, laudable items such as vintage trays and coasters can also be found this way, and the pleasure of doing so is greatly enhanced by the fact that little or nothing was paid for them.

Over the years I have amassed thousands of coasters, labels, caps and cans, and hundreds of openers, trays and glasses for relatively very little outlay and which have given me hours of pleasure organizing, sorting and reminiscing about where I obtained them (always while having a brew, of course).

Recently, another pleasure was giving almost a thousand duplicate coasters away when I realized I had to make room for more. Years ago I had a “beer tray room” in which every square inch of wall space was covered from floor to ceiling with trays that generated reverberating acoustics when the TV was turned up loud. Alas, when more kids came along and the house had to be enlarged, the beer tray room had to go. But every tray was stored away in anticipation of the day when I have the time and wifely approval to begin converting the finished basement into a “beer tray/beer

can/beer glass and beer “stuff” room. Hopefully, this will happen before all my beer stuff goes the way of yesterday’s coffee grounds.

My wife and kids, who share none of the joy I get from my beer stuff, have jokingly assured me that it’ll all follow the coffee grounds within fifteen minutes of arriving home after my funeral. One man’s treasure is another man’s junk and vice versa, so it would behoove any reader who is also into “beer stuff” to follow the obituaries and check out my garbage cans on the next garbage day. And my pleasure would continue as I look down (hopefully) from Beer Heaven and see the joy on the face of a beer stuff collector who discovers a dozen albums of beer labels, neatly alphabetized and sorted, according to country! 

CHEERS!

Dan

   A Revolting Development……   

by Dan Hodge

Beer appreciation column should be about the positive attributes of beer. Mine usually is. There are times , however, when negativity about our favorite subject should be addressed as well, for a variety of reasons.

One extremely important reason is to warn fellow enthusiasts about pitfalls in our eternal struggle to search for the perfect beer. Many an eager brewfan has been tricked into spending seven or eight dollars on what he believes will be an important ingredient to his evening’s relaxation only to discover he has brought home a six pack of skunky, oxidized swill that would make even Dr. Frankenstein recoil in horror. Negative reviews taken seriously may help to prevent such a calamity.

Another important consideration for including unfavorable comments about beer is so that readers who don’t share our love of the malt beverage can readily see that we can be objective, and not just grinning, belching sots who can’t distinguish Brooklyn Chocolate Stout from St. Ide’s Malt Liquor.

Lastly , there are people who nothing about beer but who know much about what is “in” or fashionable. These types cheerfully stock up for their soirees and barbecues with Corona, Budweiser, or Coor’s Light, thinking they’re offering their guests a “choice”. Of course, theses same gracious hosts, if they spot an impossibly expensive display of microbrews, will pick up a case or two to really impress their guests.

Possibly some honest negativity in this column regarding these types of consumption will deter people from forming incorrect opinions about beer that this type of sampling would assuredly cause.

A recent negative experience I had addresses all three of the above scenarios. Over the last several months, in the liquor store I frequent, there was a large display offering cases or six packs of THOMAS

JEFFERSON TAVERN ALE and GEORGE WASHINGTON TAVERN PORTER. An examination of the bottles supplied the information that they are products of the Yards Brewing Company in my favorite city of Philadelphia. A sign above the display proudly proclaimed that these brews were offered at $14.99/six pack or $59.96/case. There are two many other great brews available at half the price, so I passed this “deal”by.

My interest was piqued, however. A visit to the Yards website revealed that these beers were marketed as “Ales of the Revolution”, were based upon recipes from that era and were brewed in October with alcohol contents of 8% and 7% , respectively.

Now my interest was really aroused, but I still balked at the idea of thirteen bucks a six pack. I questioned the proprietor about the sale of individual bottles, to which he responded in the negative. Each week on my trip to the store I’d see that display and notice that neither the stock nor the price had decreased.

Finally, while checking out the stock of individual bottles as I always do, I discovered that the “Ales of the Revolution” had indeed been given a place of honor at $3.75/bottle. Although the price was even greater than the $59/case I figured that I could spend five bucks to try a bottle of each.

I rushed home to put them in my beer refrigerator (every beerfan has a fridge exclusively for beer, no?) to cool while I did some yard work and took a bike ride. Returning home I showered, got out my favorite beer glass, took the “Ales of the Revolution” to the deck and sat down to read Larry McMurtry.

With great anticipation I opened the THOMAS JEFFERSON TAVERN ALE and was immediately reminded of British style French fries, onto which a copious amount of vinegar had been splashed. Only half the bottle could be poured into the glass since the over-carbonation caused a great , frothy head to rise to the top and cascade down the sides and onto the pages of the McMurtry book.

A special bonus of this beer is the “secondary” head! This one came out of the bottle neck like an oil field gusher, and went through the cracks in the picnic table top onto my shoes. Holding the bottle up to the sunset, I noticed what appeared to be snowflakes racing madly around the inside. If the Yards company had had a little more foresight, they could have installed little houses or reindeer in the bottoms of the bottles and marketed this crap as snow globes at Christmas time.

I figured that anything that costs $59/case has tobe good and I probably just got a bad bottle, so I dumped the remainder into the window boxes of imp atiens ( the flowers around the deck seem to thrive on the dregs of last night’s beer bottles) and uncapped the GEORGE WASHINGTON TAVERN PORTER. Unfortunately, ditto, except that due to it’s darker color it was harder to see the snowflakes. The flowers has a good night.

“Ales of the Revolution” is an appropriate slogan because the average drinker would easily be revolted by this awful stuff. I think the Continental Army gave barrels of this slop to the Redcoats, who took a sip, promptly surrendered, and returned to England in search of drinkable ale. The rest is history.

At the 8% alcohol level this beer should last longer than the seven months since it was brewed. I’ve had trouble with Yards beers in the past. Sometimes they’re good, often they’re not drinkable. So unless, like the Pubcrawler reviewers of “Gettysbrew”, you want to see for yourself, RUN…..DON’T WALK, away from any display of “Ales of the Revolution”! 

CHEERS!

Dan

What Goes Around, Comes Around!

by Dan Hodge

 When I first became of age to legally drink beer, there wasn’t much choice. In the New York metropolitan area Rheingold, Ballantine, Knickerbocker, Piels, Schaefer, Krueger, Hensler  and Schmidt’s were  readily available and national brands like Budweiser, Pabst, Miller and Schlitz could be found anywhere, either packaged or on tap. There was a lot of fun to be had traveling to other areas on the East Coast and sampling brews like Ortlieb’s, Yuengling, Stegmaier, Narraganssett and National Bohemian, and all these beers were good, reasonably priced, had marketing ideas and commercials unique to themselves, and offered thousands of possibilities for collectors of breweriana. The most outstanding feature they shared , however, was that THEY ALL TASTED PRETTY MUCH THE SAME, leading to the belief of beer experts that American beer could not compare to the imports from Europe, which usually cost more, but again were pretty much limited to golden lagers, all tasting very similar.

There were brewers who offered more to the American drinker, such as seasonal bock beers and the iconic Ballantine India Pale Ale, but these brews accounted for a mere fraction of a brewery’s income and were completely unknown to the average beer drinker. Then in 1977 the first “craft” brewery, New Albion of Sonoma, California appeared. Although this brewery, under the direction of founder, Jack McAuliffe, only lasted five years, it won many awards and was the inspiration for other early entries into the craft beer market such as Pete Schlossberg’s Wicked ales and Jim Koch’s Samuel Adams brands.

Many beer lovers began to forego the national and regional brands with their rather bland lagers and began to savor the porters, stouts, maibocks, weissbiers, pale ales and IPAs offered by the smaller breweries. Now one didn’t have to drive to Pennsylvania to sample and determine the differences between Koehler’s and Kaier’s (none) , for example. He could just enter his local liquor store and find scores of interesting and widely varied brews that offered a vast difference from the rows of Bud and Miller cases stacked ceiling high in anticipation of a holiday weekend.

Most of the new craft brews were so good that nobody had a “go to” beer any longer. After having a six pack of Sam Adams Boston Ale, he might think that was his “go to” beer until he uncapped the first bottle of Brooklyn IPA, in which case that became his “go to”, and so forth and so on, ad infinitum.

For a couple of decades a serious beer drinker had the equivalent of nirvana, with thousands of small breweries, tasting rooms and brewpubs springing up almost daily. There was no limit to how many different beers he could try. Adding to his euphoria, many local taverns, which previously had two or three taps dispensing Bud , Pabst or Schlitz, now tried to outdo each other with how many tap handles of craft brew they offered. Almost every pub had at least two craft brews on, and it was not uncommon to walk into a pub and find a dozen or more tap handles to choose from.

Then a few years back, things began to change slightly. Small brewers discovered there was a definite market for sour beer and weirdo stuff like pizza, peanut butter and even scrapple beer. The serious beer man avoids this stuff at all costs, but fourteen years ago a sinister new style began to rear its ugly head and became the “in” thing for people who fancy themselves to be beer mavens. I’m referring to hazy “New England IPAs” in general, but specifically to brews like “Heady Topper”, which actually has fools lining up and camping out for two days in advance of its release and chasing beer trucks around in order to purchase some. 

This NEIPA “hazy” craze has taken over some brewers who, on their chalkboards, list 2, 3, or even 4 hazy IPAs out of their 8m or 10 available brews. The hazy IPA is just that: very hazy, (the late great beer guru, Michael Jackson, would have a hard time looking at the other side of the glass as he was prone to do, because you can’t see through it), very hoppy and generally, at least in my opinion, extremely unbalanced with ho malt character, whatsoever. You might as well toss a bunch of hops into a glass of grapefruit juice and drink it with a vodka chaser. It is a style I avoid,  especially since the last one I tried, “Founders All Day West Coast IPA” (an anomaly), is a particularly horrible beer. Ostensibly the “all day” designation means you can drink it all day, but I really believe it means that after you taste it, the watery bitterness plagues your taste buds for the rest of the day!

Just like their ancestors that were available to drink 50 years ago, today’s hazy and NEIPAs all have one thing in common:  THEY ALL TASTE EXACTLY THE SAME! 

What goes around, comes around, so rather than jump on the bandwagon with this latest hazy craze, give me a good old Miller High Life, any day.

Cheers, 

Dan

That's A Stretch 

by Dan Hodge

The word “stretch” as used in the title, means exaggeration, such as someone saying “Mayor DiBlasio was a great mayor” and someone else sarcastically replying “That's a stretch”. It can also mean stretching the muscles as we are cautioned to do before strenuous exercise. It can be a nickname for a tall person like Archie Bunker’s oft quoted friend from the loading dock, Stretch Cunningham, or slang for a prison term in an old George Raft movie: “He did a stretch at Sing Sing”.

 I have a favorite use of the word stretch and, as fitting for this article, it relates to beer. For many years people have been blending beers; making “black and tans” for example, and professional brewers blend different batches of brew even before they are packaged in order to achieve uniformity. Before the company offered them the public, I was making Yuengling Black and Tans by simply mixing a bottle of their Celebrated Pottsville porter with a bottle of Yuengling Premium. An even better drink was the porter mixed with a bottle of Chesterfield Ale. I happened on this idea in the early seventies when I was merely a beer drinker and not a serious “beer geek”. 

A coworker had given me almost a whole case of Guinness Extra Stout that was leftover after a St. Patrick’s Day party at which, apparently, no one liked it. At that point in my beer life, neither did I, preferring what was mostly available in this years: Pabst, Rheingold, Piel’s, Knicker- bocker, Schaefer, etc. The Guinness, to my uneducated palate, didn’t taste like “beer”. However, I certainly didn’t want the Guinness to go to waste, so I got the idea to cut it a little by adding some Blue Ribbon, making the overbearing taste of the Guinness more palatable to me. It worked and became my earliest introduction to dark beer and possibly the first step on the road to becoming a beer connoisseur. Many subsequent blendings were made, but those were only because I may have had only a bottle of Pabst and one of Schaefer in the fridge and figured “Ah, what the hell” and just dumped them together into a small pitcher. Perfectly drinkable , but not too interesting.               

“Stretching” my beer came about at the Christening party for my daughter. Because her baptism was in October, we decided to throw an Oktoberfest for the post baptism party. Blue and white checkered Bavarian pennants were draped around the deck and the yard, ten LP albums of German oompah music, picked up at an estate sale for a deceased German, were at the ready, and five kinds of wursts were procured from the local pork store, with sauerkraut, German potato salad and potato pancakes completing the menu. The only thing left was the beer.

 At the time, 29 years ago, half kegs of Hacker-Pschorr Oktoberfest were selling for something like $170. My pockets were not deep enough to justify that price, so I came up with a suitable and far less costly solution with which to wash down the “kraut und vurst” . I bought a half keg of Pabst Blue Ribbon and two cases of Yuengling porter, total cost, about $60. I was handling the tap and the pouring of pitchers (never want to stray too far from the tap), so I filled the pitchers about three quarters full with PBR and then poured a bottle and a half of the porter into them, making a suitable replacement for a marzen style and “stretching” the beer for economic purposes. Nobody had any unfavorable comments on what was poured from the pitchers into their solo cups, and the fact that the keg floated just as the festivities were coming to an end was proof enough for me, that I had conceived a tasty and economic brew for the occasion.

Lately, I’ve found another way to stretch beer. Double IPAs are delicious indeed but they have two definite downsides: they are expensive and their ABVs do not sit well with an entire evening of drinking beer. Recently I bought some double IPA brewed by a Western New York brewery for about $14/six pack and at the same time picked a full case of Yuengling Premium for $16, or less than one third of the cost of the IPA. Yuengling Premium, although a perfect, everyday “lawnmower” beer (in fact, my go to beer of the style), does not have the full flavor or alcohol content of a double IPA. I experimented by mixing the Yuengling and the DIPA one to one, and discovered a very drinkable, tasty, full bodied brew. The Yuengling offered the beautiful creamy head as only Yuengling can, and the DIPA loaned its hoppy flavor and higher ABV to the mixture. This type of “stretching” would save about $33 when buying a case of each.

 But not only economics is reason enough for stretching and blending. It’s fun to experiment with different brews and styles to see what kinds of tastes you can come up with on your own. And it’s not just limited to home consumption. Just the other day, my wife and I stopped at “Beers and Brats” near Trumansberg in the Finger Lakes of New York, and discovered that, in addition to their excellent selection of local brews, their beer menu also included five or six blends of some of them.

 It’s time for a nightcap, so I think I’ll get a bottle of my home brewed Belgian triple from last Christmas, and “stretch” it with a Yuengling. The triple is warm, the Yuengling is ice cold from the ice filled Coleman cooler, pressed into service during our current (no pun intended) power outage, so the result should be a cool beer with a creamy head and all of the flavors of a Belgian tripel, without the 10% ABV. Should I only have one? That’s a stretch!

CHEERS!

Dan

====================================

The Beer Hat

by Dan Hodge

A hat is an important part of almost everyone’s wardrobe. A hat may be worn to keep one’s head warm and dry, to protect food preparers’ hair from falling into the food they are preparing, to identify a person of authority such as a policeman, or simply to enhance the image of the person wearing it, bringing to mind the milliners of bygone days. There are many types of hats which protect one from injury as in football helmets or “hard hats” seen at most construction sites. (Although that type of hat is also worn for merely image enhancement purposes when it is donned by a slimy politician or  bureaucrat like “Mayor Pete” while posing for a photo op).

To be sure there are so many types of hats and purposes for which they are worn that it’s impossible to list them all, but some of the more popular are fedoras, derbies, beanies, cowboy hats, Sherlock Holmes “deerstalker” hats, homburgs, fezzes and turbans. Hat are even subject to fads and crazes. The Davy Crockett coonskin hat comes immediately to mind. All of these hats serve a definite purpose directly related to the hat itself.

But one type of hat that really has nothing to do solely with protection, beauty, fads, warmth or keeping dry is the Beer Hat! Rather, the Beer Hat does all of those things, but in addition SAVES YOU MONEY!

I’m not talking about beer hats which have been worn to advertise a brand of beer, that have been constructed from 12 pack carriers, or even the beer hat made famous by the Weekly World News when they published a photo of Albert Einstein wearing a cap holding two cans of beer on top with feeding lines leading to his mouth, as an illustration accompanying their article “Beer Makes You Smarter”.

What I AM talking about is a simple baseball cap displaying an Eagle, Globe and Anchor logo on the front surrounded by the wording “US Marine Veteran”, with “Proudly Served” written on the bill and “Semper Fidelis” embroidered on the adjustable strap at the rear. I own several of these hats and because I drive a convertible, seldom go anywhere without one on nice days. I estimate they may have saved me a couple of hundred dollars worth of beer during the time of ownership and thus the name “Beer Hat”.

My first one was bought at a Walmart in the Finger Lakes of New York when I drove there with the top down after forgetting my trusty Ballantine IPA at home. That very evening, as my wife, daughter and I (with the hat on), were standing at the bar of the Scale House Brewpub, a stranger came up to me, thanked me for my service and asked if he could buy me a pint. Of course I replied in the affirmative, and was soon enjoying a pint of the brewery’s excellent Ivy League Cream Ale. The very next day I was a solo visitor to the Bandwagon Brewery where almost exactly the same scenario took place, except this time the Bandwagon High Step Weizenbock was the savored pint.

This has been repeated at least a dozen times in breweries from New York and Pennsylvania to Missouri and Oklahoma, but the two most memorable happened right here in New Jersey. After a gig with my Mummers band at Peddler’s village, I stopped for a beer and a burger at Capitol Craft, a large beer bar in Greenbrook with a very impressive selection of draught brews to choose from. I sat at the bar enjoying my burger, fries, a flight and two pints. As I prepared to leave the barmaid told me the bill was “taken care of”. I asked by whom and she replied that the couple who had been sitting next to me but had left, had paid my tab and told her to thank me for my service. When I tried to offer her a tip, she said no , that they had been specific in including her tip, and she wouldn’t accept anything more. The Beer Hat strikes again!

Most recently, in fact only last week, I drove the convertible (top down, hat on) to Atlantic Highlands for my first ever visit to the Carton Brewery, at which the tasting room is located upstairs. The girl who directed me there followed me up the stairs and said “his tab”, pointing to me, is on Mike. I attempted to explain that she must have mixed me up with somebody else, but the bartender said not to worry, Mike is paying and said it was because of the hat. I have never found the Carton packaged beers to my liking, but they have many on tap which I have never seen before and all I tried proved to be excellent. A quick return is “on tap”, accompanied, of course, by the Beer Hat, although I don’t know if Mike’s (whoever the hell he is) benevolence extends to a second visit. Who cares? I’d like to make a second trip even if I have to pay!

Convertibles and the Beer Hat…..perfect together!

Cheers,

Dan

SUDS AND THE SILVER SCREEN  

by Dan Hodge

Recently, The New York Daily News ran a feature article about a customer poll taken at the Heartland

Brewery to determine which are the greatest “beer movies” of all time. Most of the dozen they chose are

quite a stretch and a couple of them leave me puzzled as to why they are even considered to be beer flicks in the first place. I have no problem with the number one selection, “Animal House”, or number six, “Smokey and the Bandit”, but definitely raise my eyebrow at the inclusion of “Titanic”, “ET”, “The Graduate” and “All About Eve”.

I suppose a slight case can be made for the beer swilling Rodney Dangerfield in “Back to School”, the savoring of Stroh’s Bohemian Style Beer on the roof of the laundry in “Shawshank Redemption” or Clark

W. Griswold and his son philosophically sharing a can of beer while lost in the desert in “National Lampoon’s

Vacation”. But these flicks hold no reverence for the serious beer connoisseur. Beer doesn’t come close to

figuring in the central theme of the movies and the minor references to beer all allude mostly to imbibing

vast quantities of American Standard in order to achieve a buzz with no consideration for the more esoteric qualities of suds.

“Googling” beer and movies on the internet provided pretty much the same fare and I realized that previous thoughts about beer movies must have all been written by people who don’t know beer. Simply

swilling draught doesn’t cut it! I began to think about what makes a great beer movie and came up with

three scenarios, any of which would qualify a movie as such. One, that the entire theme of the flick must

revolve around beer, however there are a scant few films in this category. Second, more than a passing

reference to beer must be made. A scene must name a brand or style, or have a reference to the drinking

of beer other than as a means of getting drunk. Third, my own favorite qualification: In order to be a

great beer movie, a flick MUST  contain some aspect of the first two conditions, but in addition, it must be a movie that a serious beer geek would find ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE TO WATCH WITHOUT A PINT IN HIS HAND!

That having been said, I hereby offer my favorite beer movies, in no particular order, except for number one, which I’ll save for last. I don’t know how the poll respondents at Heartland could have ignored “Take This Job and Shove It”, unless they were some kind of cosmopolitan wimps who don’t know a great beer movie from  a swine’s hindquarters, or, more likely have never even heard of David Allen Coe or Johnny Paycheck. In a small Midwestern town Charlie Pickett, (Art Carney) sells his Star Brewery to a conglomerate who changes the formula, name and packaging, and lays off workers to produce more beer at less cost. The tale has a happy ending when a former coworker, who now is employed by the conglomerate, organizes a co-op to brew and reintroduce Star to the thirsty area.

“To the Inn We’re Marching” is the first number we hear after the arrival of Prince Karl Franz (Edmund

Purdom) at Heidelberg in the movie version of “The Student Prince”. On the first day of term, the students march to Herr Reuter’s Inn, accompanied by a horse drawn beer wagon from which a keg is sneakily tapped and from which the corpsmen takeprodigious gulps. “Come Boys” is the next tune, sung by the beautiful Kathy, (Ann Blythe) as she swirls her dirndl while serving beer from six huge steins held in

each hand. When the Prince is sent by his mentor to dine in the Gasthaus with the commoners, Kathy

offers him knockwurst and beer , which he downs with great delight, and thus stimulated,  standing with one foot on the table, a military kepi on his head and a liter stein hoisted high, he lip syncs  the voice of Mario Lanza singing “Drink, Drink, Drink”. For a beer man, there is no greater thirst generator!!

“Aye, it’s quite cozy”, says Colonel Jock Sinclair (Alec Guinness) as he’s led by his pipers into the lounge bar of the hotel in a small Scottish town, home to Sinclair’s Highland Regiment in the film "Tunes of Glory".  Since this particular pub has no whisky available, the Colonel orders “exports” for his companions. All of the late winter pub and barracks scenes in this 1950’s British film suggest a pint of 80 Shilling or a Wee Heavy.

Also in the British vein, “The Shillingbury Blowers”,released in the US as “And the Band Played On”, (not

to be confused with the AIDS epidemic film of the same name), is about a tone deaf country village ban in England. The musicians don’t care what they sound like, as long as their beloved bandmaster and raconteur, “Saltie” Wicklow, (Trevor Howard) is in charge. When the local government replaces Saltie with a young, recently graduated conductor who relates no stories about the music, but who somehow manages to make the band sound like the Band of the Royal Marines, the bandsmen rebel by “tipping the notes”, to make him look bad at the village band competition. The English countryside, the beautiful British accents and wonderful pub scenes where the rebellion is hatched after band practice make the urge to quaff a cask conditioned bitter almost unbearable.

Moving across the Irish Sea to Innisfree, John Ford’s classic, “The Quiet Man” features several scenes in

which ale plays an important part. When retired American fighter, Sean Thornton (John  Wayne) ventures for the first  time into the House of Cohan, the local pub, he orders “one of those black beers”, which Mr. Cohan identifies as “the porter”, the same drink that is later slapped from the hand of Michaeline Flynn (Barry Fitzgerald) by Squire Will Dannaher (Victor McLaglen) at the engagement party of Thornton and the Squire’s sister, Mary Kate. A pint of Guinness is a necessity while watching the fight scene, especially when Thornton and Dannaher take a break from the fisticuffs, pop into Cohan’s for a little refreshment and request a drink .

Mr. Cohan considers this request briefly before deciding “Oh Yes! Porter! Porter’s the very thing!” and expertly pulls two pints. The ensuing argument over who should be allowed to buy ends with the squire

throwing his pint into Thornton’s face. The fight resumes when Sean requests a bar towel to dry his

face before punching the squire through the frontdoor. However, all differences are cast aside when the

two, many pints later, return to Thornton’s cottage to happily share dinner and a pitcher of “the very thing”.

I love to watch the dwarves and midgets walk UNDER the swinging doors and drink beer from steins that

appear to be as big as they are in “The Terror of Tiny Town”, a 1938 western featuring Jed Buell’s midgets,

small ponies, and, for some inexplicable reason, full sized everything else. Several pints of anything are

needed to just get through this one!

To the best of my knowledge, the ultimate beer movie was never released in theaters and is probably not

available in video stores, but “American Beer” is easily obtainable via the internet. It’s a long documentary

about five lads who pile into a van with the objective of visiting thirty eight breweries in forty days, and

their adventures on the journey. Everyone from Fritz Maytag, to Dick Yuengling, to our own local Dave Hoffman of the Climax Brewery is interviewed with beautiful brewery scenes in the background, suds

sloshing everywhere, and pints in everyone’s hands.

There is no plot, no continuity, no costuming, or choreography, below average photography and sound

and no mass market appeal , but to my mind it remains the ultimate beer flick. You’d better have

more than one or two fresh IPAs on hand if you want to watch this one from start to finish!

Last month I celebrated St. Patrick’s Day in proper fashion but I just realized the next one is only 11 months away, so I’ll have to stop here. Time to grab a Guinness and sit down to watch “The Quiet Man” for the 169th time!   

Cheers!

Dan 

Things You Can Learn From a Beer Can

 by Dan Hodge

Recently, after finishing a St. Paddy’s Day parade with my pipe band, we gathered in a parking lot to do a little post-parade tailgating, with sandwiches and beer supplied by the band. One of the beers thoughtfully purchased by the man in charge was an imperial stout brewed by Forgotten Boardwalk. At 10.3% it wasn’t exactly a thirst quenching style beer, but I chose it because I’d never had one before. It turned out to be not only refreshing, but a source of newly learned information as well. On the side of the can was a short piece about where its name, Gravity Road, had come from. According to the can and for inexplicable reasons, the beer was named for a section of the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company railroad, a short line that operated between Summit Hill and Mauch Chunk (now Jim Thorpe), Pa. from 1828 until 1932. When not actually in use for hauling coal, the railroad sold rides to passengers who rode down by gravity without the benefit of a locomotive, said to be the forerunner of Coney Island’s first roller coaster.

Over the years I have been called by many to be a “veritable fountain of useless information”, therefore I filed this tidbit away in my mind, while thanking Forgotten Boardwalk for having broadened my knowledge by putting their railroad story on the side of their beer can.

Settling down and popping the top of a more sessionable Narragansett Lager, I began to think about what other information of a practical, historical, geographical or general nature could be found on a beer can, and came up with quite a few to enhance the wisdom of the devoted beer fan.

First, of course, would have to be the Gottfried Krueger Brewing Company of Newark, which first introduced canned beer in 1935 in a test market in Richmond, Virginia. This novel packaging required instructions on how to actually open it and what better place to print them than right on the side of the can. Complete with pictures, it showed how a church key could be deployed to gain access to the contents. Valuable facts about canned beer itself could also be gleaned from the sides of Pabst Bock, Neuweiler Cream Ale, and Grand Prize Beer cans which informed drinkers and readers about the benefits of canned versus bottled beer: no light struck skunkiness, easier to stack, didn’t need to be returned for deposit and stayed colder.

But other valuable information, unrelated to the can itself, was and is available on the sides of cans. A few years ago the price of a six pack (6 for 89 cents) was printed on the cans of a few brewers. I remember buying (Weidmann’s, I believe) in Virginia during my Marine Corps years with that price printed, preventing an unscrupulous retailer from greedily marking up his profit.

During the can collecting craze of the 1970’s, in honor of the bicentennial, the Falstaff Brewing Company issued a “Presidential Series” featuring the Presidents of the US with a short biography and notable accomplishments of each. Learning about our nation’s history while quaffing a cool Falstaff beats hell out of a musty textbook in a dusty classroom.

The Pittsburgh Brewing Company, producer of Iron City Beer, was probably the most prolific of beer can information distribution. Over the years they released many series of Iron City cans, including my favorite, points of interest in New Jersey: the Twin Lights at Atlantic Highlands, the Great Falls at Paterson and the Atlantic City boardwalk to name a few, all giving a little interesting blurb about the attraction. They had a similar release of cans featuring points of interest in Pittsburgh such as Three Rivers Stadium, the Cathedral of Learning (learn about it from a beer can) and the Pittsburgh Inclined Plane.

For those not particularly interested in geographical or historical attractions, Iron City offered other diversions while drinking their beer. Cans devoted to the Pirates, Penguins and Steelers increased a sports fan’s knowledge of baseball, hockey and football. Some cans even had team rosters, World Series results and box scores to entertain and enlighten thirsty fans and no doubt settled some baseball arguments: “Bill Mazeroski’s homer beat the Yankees in 1961”, one barroom regular might have claimed. “Like hell” came the reply. “It was in 1960; it says so right here on the can”.

Many breweries sold their beer in cans commemorating a single person or event , if not actually issuing a series. Ortlieb’s of Philadelphia marketed a special “Mummers” can in honor of the Philadelphia Mummers Parade, introducing America’s oldest folk parade to people who had never heard of it but managed to procure Ortlieb’s outside of the metro Philly area. Another Philadelphia brewer, Gretz, issued a set of cans with the lyrics to old songs printed on the sides, possibly inducing many a wannabe Mitch Miller or Perry Como to drink Gretz, a marketing ploy plied also by the Walter Brewing Company with their “Sangerfest” brand.

Who needed “Trivia Night" at taverns in the 1950’s when Gretz and Esslinger , also of Philly, offered sets of “trivia” beers with questions of and answers to various subjects on the sides, adding to the encyclopedic knowledge of a bright and thirsty Gretz or Esslinger drinker.

Carling testified to the safety of their brewery by issuing a can which proudly proclaimed that they had reached over 1,000,000 man hours of labor without a serious accident, possibly planting the idea that some of that good fortune could rub off on Black Label drinkers.

While not actually imparting any knowledge, many brewers relied on pretty girls to adorn the sides of their cans, Liebmann Brewery’s “Miss Rheingold” being the most prominent.

One girl, not so pretty, was Fatima Yechburgh, better known as Miss Old Frothingslosh, spokeswoman for the Pittsburgh Brewing Company’s special brand. In addition to her picture, the can provided information as to why she won the coveted title: “Fatima Yechburgh, winner of the 1969 “Miss Old Frothingslosh Contest” was chosen on the basis of beauty, talent, poise…….and quantity. She is the woman who best symbolizes Old Frothingslosh, the pale stale ale with the foam on the bottom. Now she’s the girl all others look down on” .

As can clearly be seen, reading the information on the sides of beer cans greatly increases a beer drinker’s sports, geographic, historic and general knowledge.

Beer…..quenching your thirst and making you smarter!

Cheers,

Dan

Drinking beer is a pleasure actively pursued by millions. The “beverage of moderation” has served a valuable purpose in quenching thirst, steadying nerves, inspiring song fests, building up courage, fortifying sides in an argument, and reducing stress, to name a few. (True, there are downsides such as losing driver’s licenses and gaining waistlines, but this an article about the POSITIVE aspects of our favorite drink).

However, while actual consumption of beer is the foremost reason for its existence, the brewing industry has contributed to American culture and nostalgia in many more diverse ways through its advertisin strategies. I can think of no other single American product that has so many varied and novel ways to get a company’s name before the public.  

Madison Avenue jingles are the most evident example (Schaefer …is the…one beer to have….when you’re

having more than one!, eg.) but many more practical advertising ploys have been used over the years and have generated a whole new cottage industry: the searching for and collection of beer related itemspopularly known as “breweriana”.

In addition to the bottles, labels, caps and cans that every beer drinker automatically obtains when he purchases beer to be consumed at home, there are scores of other items which have been used for over a hundred years to promote brewery or brand name recognition: serving trays, glassware, advertising signs , bottle and can openers, foam scrapers, match book covers, articles of clothing and head gear, tip trays, calendars, rulers, coasters and coaster holders, place mats, switch plates, clocks, postcards, lamps, record albums, sports team schedules, swizzle stick holders, statuary, beer koozies, coins, wooden cases, tap handles, and  salt and pepper shakers, all of which had

very practical household uses in addition to keeping the brewer’s name in front of your eyes. Beer truck driver’s

uniform patches, toy trucks and model railroad cars have also proudly displayed the name of a brewing company. Perhaps Rogue Brewing Company outdoes all by distributing Rogue Ale condoms. Hopefully, however, the practicality of this item is on a one time only use basis and the brewery’s name is only viewed by two people at a time.

Many breweriana collectors have beautiful collections worth thousands and thousands of dollars and which

are worthy of display in museums of American memorabilia. Magazines put out by collectors’ associations feature articles and beautiful pictorials highlighting collectible items of breweriana and histories of the breweries that issued them.

Businesses dealing exclusively in beer antiquity exist oth traditionally and on line. Any serious collector can visit an on line breweriana website and find almost anything he wants if he is willing to pay the price, but as the title of this article suggests, the average beer guy is more into beer “stuff”. By this I mean items of a beer related nature that he just finds in his daily routine. Grabbing some new coasters off a bar, finding a Stegmaier stein at a garage sale, tripping over an old Ballantine wooden case while inspecting a basement, or even stuffing promotional literature into a bag while attending a beer festival are wonderful ways to begin a sizeable collection of beer “stuff” that anybody other

than a beer guy would think is merely junk. To be sure, valuable items such as vintage trays and coasters can

also be found this way, and the pleasure of doing so is greatly enhanced by the fact that little or nothing was

paid for them.

Over the years I have amassed thousands of coasters, labels, caps and cans, and hundreds of openers, trays and glasses for relatively very little outlay and which have given me hours of pleasure organizing, sorting and reminiscing about where I obtained them (always while having a brew, of course).

Recently, another pleasure was giving almost a thousand duplicate coasters away when I realized I had to make room for more. Years ago I had a “beer tray room” in which every square inch of wall space was covered from floor to ceiling with trays that generated reverberating acoustics when the TV was turned up loud. Alas, when more kids came along and the house had to be enlarged, the beer tray room had to go. But every tray was stored away in anticipation of the day when I have the time and wifely approval to begin converting the finished basement into a “beer tray/beer

can/beer glass and beer “stuff” room. Hopefully, this will happen before all my beer stuff goes the way of yesterday’s coffee grounds.

My wife and kids, who share none of the joy I get from my beer stuff, have jokingly assured me that it’ll all follow the coffee grounds within fifteen minutes of arriving home after my funeral. One man’s treasure is another man’s junk and vice versa, so it would behoove any reader who is also into “beer stuff” to follow the obituaries and check out my garbage cans on the next garbage day. And my pleasure would continue as I look down (hopefully) from Beer Heaven and see the joy on the face of a beer stuff collector who discovers a dozen albums of beer labels, neatly alphabetized and sorted, according to country!

 Cheers!

DAN

All Aboard!…..for BEER!

Four of my brothers and sisters and I like to get together a few times a year at a local brewery to talk, argue and reminisce while enjoying a few craft brews. Our latest gathering was at one of New Jersey’s newest brewery/tasting rooms, the Oak Flower Brewing Company in Millington, open only since the end of November 2022. Oak flower is a smallish but nice venue offering the usual overabundance of IPAs, although their Morava Pils, my favorite, was a welcome alternative.

The thing that impressed me most about this place, though, is that its literally directly across the street from Millington Station on New Transit’s Peacock Gladstone branch, offering an efficient and safe way to get home if too much beer tasting has occurred. That got me to thinking about all the possibilities of beer runs by rail and came up with four in the northern New Jersey area. The only qualification is that the brewery must be within only a five or ten minute walk from a station, thereby eliminating some really excellent breweries that are not really “train friendly”. That being said, here are four different routes enabling a thirsty rail rider to quench that thirst without having to worry about driving home:

First up is New Jersey Transit’s Raritan Valley Line. Start at Local Newark Brewery on Broad Street. After enjoying a pint or two, walk across the street to the Washington Park Light Rail station to board a car for the five minute ride to Newark Penn station. The Raritan Valley line stops in Roselle Park, only a short walk to Climax, New Jersey’s oldest craft brewery. Here you can stand right in a working brewery surrounded by pallets, sacks of grain and forklifts, while listening to owner Dave Hoffmann give a “tour”. At this time of year (February) his Snowplow Ale is well recommended.

       The very next stop on this line is Cranford, where a three block walk will bring you to what may be New Jersey’s worst brewery, the Yale Terrace Brewing Company. If, after trying one of their brews you don’t try to throw yourself under a train, (their beers are certainly not to die for, but well may be ones to die FROM), quickly board the next westbound for a stop at Westfield, home of the Lion’s Roar Brewery, only a couple of blocks from Westfield station. Lion’s Roar has a very varied selection of ales and lagers, possibly the most extensive of any new brewery in the state, a refreshing change from the oceans of NEIPAs offered by others.

Continuing on into Somerville, detrain and pop into the Village Brewing Company, a fully licensed brewpub serving food, wine and spirits as well as some very good beers. Staying on the train to the end of the line in High Bridge requires almost no walk at all to get into the High Rail Brewing Company, IF it’s open. Not long ago I read that it was closed due to an elderly man having driven his Mercury Grand Marquis into it. I had an interesting experience on my only trip there, prior to the demolition derby. I asked the man behind the bar for a flight and was told that I couldn’t have one because all the five ounce flight glasses were in use, but I could have a ten ounce glass if I didn’t want a full pint. Of course I asked why he couldn’t just fill the ten ounces up halfway and was given a non intelligible response, so I settled for a ten ounce pour of pils. It was only after I saw a party of four exit after leaving their empty flights (16 glasses) at the end of the bar, that I again asked for a flight but was told he was too busy to wash all those glasses, but I could wash them myself! No thanks!

The Morris and Essex Line departs from Hoboken Station, ten or twelve blocks from Hoboken Brewing Company. This line makes a different stop in Newark, this time at Broad Street Station, three or four blocks from the aforementioned Local Newark Brewery. From the station the train makes a stop at Orange, practically right on top of Four City Brewing Company. Have a pint or two and hop on the next train to South Orange and the wonderful Gaslight Brewery and Restaurant, my home away from home. Full liquor license, great food, OUTSTANDING beer and always a great variety of guest beers, both bottled and draught to choose from. Next stop is Summit Station and a five minute walk to Bull and Bear Brewery. Bull and Bear is a very small venue, but makes very decent beers and is well worth the stop bedore continuing on to Morristown and the Glenbrook Brewery, a quick hike from Morristown Station, very different from Bull and Bear because by comparison, this place is huge. My single visit (so far) there afforded some very nice brews. This rail line ends at Hackettstown home to both Man Skirt and Cziegmeister Breweries, both of which are housed in very different venues; ManSkirt in an old bank building, complete with vault, and Cziegmeister in an old automobile dealership. Both were very enjoyable. Heading back to Summit, one can change for the brief ride to Millington and the Oak Flower Brewery.

Next is the Northeast Corridor Line, America’s busiest railroad, again starting at Local Newark, with a quick light rail ride to Newark Penn and a twenty minute ride to Rahway Station almost directly across the street from Wet Ticket Brewery, so named for the platform on which sensible politicians (rare breed, they) ran to end prohibition. I’ve been there many times and the beer is always very fresh and very good, although in my opinion, they don’t brew enough lagers; no Oktoberfests, Doppelbocks, etc, although they do brew a nice pils. Their Imperial Oak Stout, aged in bourbon barrels and marketed in wax sealed bottles won first prize at a Draught Board 15 meeting which was a tasting of fifteen brews of that style. Boarding the next southbound takes you to New Brunswick Station only a block or two from Harvest Moon Brewpub, another fully licensed establishment offering almost nothing in the way of parking, so the train ride is almost a necessity. 

Next stop is Princeton Junction and boarding the “dinky” or PJ&B (Princeton Junction and Back) for the three mile ride to downtown Princeton and the original Triumph Brewpub. This place has been closed for some time but is scheduled to reopen in the near future at a new location and from what I understand, even closer to the station.

The last beer route I thought of is the North Jersey Coast Line, once again starting at Local Newark and continuing to Wet Ticket in Rahway, where the train leaves the main line and headsnsouth on the coastal route making it’s first stop at Woodbridge Station, a half block from J.J. Bitting’s Brewing Company, another fully  and licensed brewpub. This line continues on to Red Bank, home to Birravino and Red Tank breweries, Asbury Park, home to a couple more, then Bradley Beach and the Bradley Beach Beer Project, before making its last “beer stop” in Belmar and the Beach Haus Brewery.

This is by no means a complete list of breweries accessible by train or even a list of good breweries. But all of these listed require no athletic legwork to visit and no buzzed driving to get home. So… next time your hear the conductor shout “All Aboard”, think BEER!

Cheers,

Dan

Beer Versus Wine - American Style

Beer is the most popular alcoholic drink in America finishing far ahead of wine, distilled spirits and numerous other types of beverages such as hard lemonade and other equally horrible tasting stuff. This month I’d like to point out a few of the reasons for this by comparing the malt beverage to the product of the grape as they relate to several aspects of American life. Whiskey has been left out because in general distilled spirits are not considered to be beverages of moderation. For every lover of single malt scotch, for example, there is a stocky Slavic type urging you to “Dringk! Dringk! You like? Taste goot, hah?”, and forcing you to take a sip of a colorless liquid that burns the lips, tongue, esophagus, and stomach, while he slaps you on the back and offers another slug. Such booze is akin to liquid fire and doesn’t belong inour informal beer versus wine bout.

Although there are many excellent wines produced inNorthern Europe , that area is predominately a “beer” region, and although the Mediterranean area is noted for it’s wines, good beers come from there as well. But there is no place like the USA that produces so many examples of each, so there’s no better setting for our tongue in cheek beer versus wine match.

First to be considered is the basic difference between the two libations: beers are primarily made from malted barley, while wines are made from grapes. Even though there are other primary bases for both of these beverages (wheat, for example, for beer and elderberries, blackberries, dandelions and the like for wine), the basic difference remains the same. Even weiss beers contain at least some malted barley, whereas some types of wine contain no grapes at all.Score one for as being truest to it’s roots.

  Beer 1……Wine 0

In America , beer is considered to be a more manly drink. Can you just imagine Matt Dillon saying to his sidekick “C’mon, Chester , let’s go over to The Long Branch and have a glass of Beaujolais ”? The great American pastimes of baseball, Nascar racing, Friday night fights, fishing and lawn mowing wouldn’t be as "red, white, and blue” if accompanied by a feminine sounding Chardonnay. Beer drinkers proudly hold high  heir drinking vessel, be it a can, bottle, pint glass, stein or plastic cup. I’ve noticed that wine drinkers seem to extend their pinkies while holding their glasses by the stem, so as not to “bruise” the wine. The only “bruising” that accompanies beer is when some

unlucky soul is hit over the head with a beer bottle in a barroom brawl.

 Beer 2……Wine 0

Beer, in addition to being a vehicle for relaxation, is a great thirst quencher. They don’t call “lawnmower beer’ for nothing. A frosty can of suds can definitely slake one’s thirst and leaves one thinking about another. For me at least, wine doesn’t do anything for thirst and in fact only makes me thirstier. (For beer)

 Beer 3……..Wine 0

Beer is meant to be drunk immediately upon tapping or opening a bottle or can, thus instantly solving the

problem for which it was opened in the first place. Red wine is supposed to be uncorked and allowed time to

“breathe” before consumption. A beer drinker would never waste time in this fashion. In fact, I knew a guy who would punch two holes in the top of a can, raise the can to his lips and in three seconds suck the can dry. No time for “breathing” there, either for him or the beer. While the red wine connoisseur was getting antsy watching his bottle breathe, Old Fred could have downed a whole six pack of Schaefer. Decidedly less time consuming.

 Beer 4……..Wine 0

At one time wine enthusiasts looked upon screw cap wine bottles as something to be spurned ,containing a cheap drink for the masses, as opposed to traditional bottles requiring all sorts of implements to remove the corks, which were then snobbishly sniffed, in order to demonstrate one’s expertise on the subtleties of the wine. Beer guys, on the other hand, welcome all sorts of things like pop top cans, screw caps, EZ taps, in fact anything that helps them get to beer faster. Positive proof that beer drinkers are more modern and welcome innovation. (In addition, they don’t sniff the caps!)

 Beer 5……..Wine 0

The USA and it’s eternal ally, Great Britain , favor beer.France favors wine.

Beer 6……..Wine 0

With it’s advertising signs, trays, tap handles, coasters, logo glassware and countless other items, beer offers many opportunities for collectors of “breweriana” to enhance their pleasure. Collecting wine related items pretty much starts and ends with corkscrew.

 Beer 7………Wine 0

Other than Ernest and Julio Gallo and the Bartles and James guys, there aren’t a heck of a lot of memorable wine commercials. Television beer ads and jingles have traditionally been among the best advertising on the tube. A lot of them are even better than some of the insipid network shows. People remember beer jingles from forty and fifty years ago. No one remembers a wine jingle.

Beer 8……..Wine  0

A cooler packed with ice and cans or bottles of beer makes a prettier picture at a picnic than a bottle of

wine.

Beer 9………Wine 0

As explained in previous “Beer My Way” articles, there are all kinds of things one can do with beer besides

drinking it. ( washing hair, killing slugs, etc.) and thepackaging of beer allows us to make potato guns, targets, and  dog poop scrapers, balance uneven table legs, and arm street gangs, to name a few. What thehell do you do with an empty wine bottle other than stick a candle in it?

Beer 10……….Wine 0

Beer wins by a 10 to zip shutout over wine!!!!! 

 Christmas Cheer and Beer

It has become somewhat of a tradition over the past few years that, between Christmas and New Year’s, some friends drop by to sample the latest available Christmas, “Holiday”, and Winter brews.  While this little session pales by comparison to Christmas itself or to my other passion, the New Year’s Day Philadelphia Mummers Parade, it certainly beats the hell out of the other activities that occur during the week between those two big events: the returning of un-wanted and ill-fitting Christmas gifts an attempting to figure out in what order I accumulated the reams of credit card receipts stuffed into my jacket pockets during the preceding month.

This year, four of us , all named Brian or Dan, got together on December 30th to sample twenty five different holiday beers. First, my brother, Brian Hodge, a “Draught Board 15 Certified Beer Judge”, which, if the truth be known, is not the equivalent of agenuine certified beer judge. Brian’s qualifications for this designation stem primarily from three factors: One, he clerked part- time in a liquor store in his youth and can distinguish Miller Lite from Sierra Nevada Bigfoot every time. Two, he was given asupply of “Certs” breath fresheners for the ride home,hence his “Certification” and most importantly, three, he had nothing else scheduled that evening.

Also in attendance was Brian Lynch, nationally acclaimed “Beer Poet”, so known because at one time, while seated at the Gaslight bar, he recited a limerick having something to do with  “a man named Jock”, “drinking a bock”, and another word which completed the limerick rhyme scheme correctly.

A welcome newcomer to the event was Dan Soboti, gracious host of the Gaslight Brewery and Restaurant, and world renowned beer taster. Dan is primarily noted for for his love of cask conditioned ales, and , although there were none on the list ofbeers to be sampled, he displayed his dedication to the serious work at hand by making the sacrifice and forging ahead to render an opinion on all twenty fivebeers tasted.

Finally, yours truly, a man who has happily dedicated a good portion of his spare time to appreciation of the brew master’s craft. In spite of the fact that I have rarely met a beer I didn’t like, I promised to be as objective as possible in order to pick out a couple of bad ones. It wasn’t easy, but it was with a great sense of accomplishment that I finally managed to do so.

As in previous years we used our own rating methodin which we scored each brew 0-3 for appearance, 0-4for aroma, 0-10 for balance, mouthfeel and aftertaste, and 0-5 for our personal overall impressions. With only two exceptions, we all knew what we were drinking. Six of the beers were ”vintage”. Even thoughsome of the panel are not professionals, they still knew what they like.

For the second year in a row we found Sierra NevadaCelebration Ale to be our favorite, with all of us giving it high scores in three categories. Although some thought it maybe a little too hoppy for our “session” tastes, we gave it a near perfect in that department ,as well. A very close second was Clipper City’s Heavy Seas Winter Storm Ale, which was new to all of us. When the significantly lower price compared to many craft beers is figured in, it’s probably the equal of  the Celebration in value.

The two blind tastings were Sam Adams Winter Lager, which finished 16th and my own homebrewed WinterWheat Doppelbock, which tied for 9th with Otter Creek Alpine Ale and Stoudt’s Winter Ale. Last yearthe Stoudt’s was rendered undrinkable, due to oxidation.

Gales’ 12% Golden Jubilee(2002) and Thomas Hardy’s (2010) were two vintage beers that scored pretty wellat 4th and 6th, respectively. The other vintage beersdidn’t fare so well. Brooklyn Chocolate Stout (2006), Sierra Nevada Bigfoot (2005) and my own Hodge’s Hoppy Holiday (2008) had all seen better days and finished toward the bottom. There was some discussion as to whether or not Sam Adams Triple Bock was even beer. It certainly looks and tastes like sherry and that being the case, why not just drink sherry? It’s a lot cheaper and you don’t have to keepit for ten years!

The two beers that finished way behind the others were Saranac Season’s Best and Samuel Smith’s 2021-2022 Winter Welcome. The Saranac was very out of character with the usually outstanding Saranac portfolio, having been judged to have no discerniblebouquet and a bland appearance and taste. Nobody seemed to like it…..it was just “beer”. A Coor’s Light fan would probably love it. The Sam Smith’s was dead last and practically undrinkable because of skunkiness , probably caused by the brewery’s insistence onusing clear bottles. If you can procure this beer in good condition, it’s usually excellent.One interesting result is that five Sam Adams beerswere tried and they all finished exactly next to one another in positions 12 through 16. I guess that must be some sort of tribute to the brewery’s consistency.

I haven’t had a chance to give some of these beers a second shot as yet, because as of January 2nd, I’m attempting to shed a few pounds.   I'm on a diet that is popularly known as the South Beach Diet, butwhich I refer to as the (expletive deleted- you can't say that Dan...editor) Diet  since the first two weeksof which allow for no beer at all.  What was I thinking about?

Seriously , after twenty five beers, even though the samples are only two or three ounces, I wonder how objective an opinion can be? They probably begin to taste alike. Therefore, I’ve come up with an innovative solution to this distressing problem. Next year , perhaps we should schedule three nights, reversing the order of the beers to be tasted on the second night and and starting from the middle on the third.

Sounds like a workable plan! 

Cheers!

Dan

Flights Of No Fancy

by Dan Hodge

In previous articles I’ve expounded on beers savored, and brewpubs and breweries visited, most of which were memorable because of happy experiences. However, as in everything else, there are always some downsides and in perusing the list of over 300 breweries visited and always ordering a flight, have come up with some worthy of a poor review for a variety of reasons. So without further ado, in alphabetical order, here are a dozen or so, where the ordering of a flight stands out for other than pleasant memories:

The Anthem Brewing Company of Oklahoma City had fairly decent beers but the wait of almost 15 minutes to be served was intolerable. There were only two other patrons at the time, two girls who were insisting upon “trying” (read..free sample) each beer before selecting those they wanted for a FLIGHT!  At one point a keg kicked and the bartender went to tap a replacement before acknowledging my presence, let alone pouring me a flight. As I recall, the girls were pretty good looking and perhaps he was only trying to impress them with the possibility of a future date, while ignoring me. I finally got my flight, downed it, and left while the girls were still agonizing over what to pick for their second round.

In the Banff Brewpub in Banff, Alberta, Canada a 6 beer flight was presented without benefit of any identification. Some were easy to distinguish, (stout versus wit, eg.) but when I questioned the waiter as to which was the helles and which was the pils, he actually, UNBELIEVABLY, picked up a glass, took a sip, and rendered his decision. You can’t make that shit up! A similar scenario happened a few days later at the Grizzly Paws Brewpub in Canmore, Alberta, but at least in that case the waitress said she didn’t know which was which and left me to my own devices.

A couple of years ago, on my way home from Norfolk, I stopped at the Barley Oak Brewery in Berlin, Maryland. The most memorable things in the open windowed, screenless tasting room were the size of the flies competing with me for sips of my flight.

The freight Yard Brewery in Clay, NY had a very nice “steampunk” atmosphere, however the average beer was served in solo cups (NO flights “due to Covid”…..Covid knows the difference between plastic and glass and the size of each). Definitely a downer. Ditto the Sunken Silo Brewery in Lebanon, NJ.

A different reason for “no flights” was found at the High Rail Brewery in High Bridge, NJ. When I asked for a flight of what eventually turned out to be above average beers I was told no flight sized glasses were available, but instead of a full pint I could order a 10 ounce glass. Since the flights consisted of 5 ounce pours, I asked why couldn’t he just fill 10 ounce glasses up halfway. This obvious solution to the problem was rejected, so after I ordered a 10 ounce glass of pils, I observed 4 patrons returning their trays of empty flight glasses and departing the premises. When I questioned if I could NOW have a flight, he said he was too busy to wash the glasses, but I could get the flight if I cared to wash the glasses myself. I did not.

Jack Russell’s Brewpub in Bar Harbor, Maine offered a 6 beer flight of beers ranging from very light (wit) to very dark (Russian Imperial Stout), but which, other than color, were indistinguishable from one another. Perhaps the brewer has stepped out for a beer during style class at brewing school.

Long gone Maxwell’s Brewpub in Hoboken, NJ had no problem with serving flights since they only offered one very average beer.

The only drawback to another defunct brewery, Jersey Jim’s of Bridgewater, NJ. was that after the 20 mile drive to get there I was told I’d have to pay a cover charge to have a flight. I have never paid, nor will I ever pay a cover charge to drink a beer. Raise the price if you must to pay for your always too loud band, but don’t ever think I’m going to pay directly for something I don’t want to listen to in the first place.

The recently out of business Raritan bay Brewing Company in Keansburg, NJ required a hand stamp to prove you had “taken a tour” in order to have a flight. The 4 beers I had weren’t bad, but I couldn’t try the other 4 they had on tap because the bartender was too busy mopping the floor behind the bar. The mopping was taking place directly in front of a large jar labeled “tips” into which I deposited nothing after failing to obtain a second flight after a 10 minute wait. At least the floor was clean!

Wayne, NJ. Is home to the Seven Tribesmen Brewery to which I traveled on a delightful Sunday afternoon. As I was attempting to enter, an employee informed me that it was closed for a private party, but the biergarten, which I would have preferred anyway, was open. When I asked if they did flights he responded in the affirmative. So I happily repaired to the biergarten where the man who seated me said someone would be with me shortly. 15 minutes later “someone” turned out to be him, who then informed me that no flights were available in the garden. So again, the lousy Solo cups but this time with a twist. They came with lids that were on so tightly that when you tried to get them off, the beer slopped all over everywhere.

The South 40 Brewery in Edison, NJ had a flight which included two different but similar beers: “I Fu……d Up Barleywine”, about which the brewer admitted making a mistake and “I Didn’t Fu… Up Barleywine”, in which the mistake had supposedly been corrected. (It hadn’t)

 And speaking of “I Fu….d Up”, saving the best, or worst, for last is the Yale Terrace brewery of Cranford, NJ. I absolutely defy any knowledgeable beer fan to go there, order a flight and finish it. It can’t be done!. See Beer my Way article “The Charge of the Flight Brigade”

All that being said I think I’ll go create my own flight from the 15 or so different beers currently in my fridge!

Cheers, 

Dan

       Beermageddon

             (or, The Saints and Sinners of Beer)

The Book of Revelation makes reference to Armageddon, or the place where the final battle between the forces of good and evil takes place just before Judgement Day. There are those who think that America’s Armageddon may be occurring right now as the forces of evil attempt to destroy our history and culture by tearing down statues, deifying

criminals, satanizing police forces and driving an obvious wedge between its citizens.

Beer lovers have been dealing with their own Armageddon for years, but our “beermageddon” is a win, win situation. If good triumphs over evil, we win, and conversely, if the forces of Satan defeat the armies of God, we also win. But the forces are so evenly matched that there will be no clear winner, except for the beer geek.

The “good” side of beermageddon is led by the saints of brewing: St. Bernardus, St. Feullian, St.Jozef, St. Hubert, St. Bernard of Clairvox, St. Sebastian, St. Christopher, St. Benedict, and St. Peter, with Saint Arnold, the patron saint of brewing at the head of the legions of Belgian Abbey and Trappist beers. Fighting right alongside them we find America’s contributions to the war effort, “St. Stan’s” from Modesto, California and the Saint George brewery of Hampton, Virginia, ably assisted by those fighters who have not as yet achieved sainthood: Anderson Valley’s “Brother David Dubbel,” Shepherd Neames’ “Bishop’s Finger”, and Avery’s “The Reverend”.

 While the armies of good in beermageddon are overwhelmingly Christian, we must not forget Schmaltz Brewing Company’s “He’Brew”, “Messiah” and “Jewbelation” brews pitching in to destroy the forces of evil. The Supreme Commander of this whole army is Du Claw Brewing’s “Sweet Baby Jesus”.

As a child, I was read Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales, one of which was “The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf”, about a mean, vain little girl who, rather than soil her new shoes, threw her mother’s fresh loaf of bread into a mud puddle to use as a stepping stone. As soon as she did, she was sucked directly down into hell, where the “Marsh King” had a

brewery. The accompanying illustration depicted a glowering, unkempt, heavyset king surrounded by a huge spider web occupied by an even bigger spider with a leering human face, both faces glaring at the five year old reader as the king raised a moss covered stein to his greenish lips.

That picture caused me to think of breweries as dark, evil places, and even though I have happily come to the realization that they are not, many modern brewers draw upon that image to promote their products. Because of this, the opposition to “Sweet Baby Jesus’” army is powerful and not to be taken lightly. Its malefic leader is Belgium’s “Satan” biere and to confuse the army of righteousness, he assumes many different guises and names: Young’s “Old Nick”, Wychwood’s “Hobgoblin”, Southern Tier’s “Krampus” (Christmas devil), Weyerbacher’s “Old Heathen”, Flying Dog’s “Old Scratch”, Midnight Sun’s “Arctic Devil” barleywine, Rock Bottom’s “Black Peter” and the 13% “Bezelbuth” ale. Whatever his name, he leads an army of Unibroue’s “Maudite” (accursed) on its “Deathly” (pale ale by Reagan Ales of California) mission to defeat the “Blind Faith” (Magic Hat) of “Sweet Baby Jesus’ “ army.

The fight rages on as it will for as long as there are beers and brewers, and on any given day the beer lover can settle down with a glass of Asylum Brewery’s “Ambergeddon”, and take one side or the other, secure in the knowledge that no matter his choice, he can’t lose! 

=============

A Revolting Development .....

By Dan Hodge

A beer appreciation column should be about thevpositive attributes of beer.  Mine usually is. There are times, however, when negativity about our favorite subject should be addressed as well, for a variety of reasons.

One extremely important reason is to warn fellow enthusiasts about pitfalls in our eternal search for the perfect beer. Many an eager brewfan has been tricked into spending ten or twelve dollars on what he believes will be an important ingredient to his evening’s relaxation only to discover he has brought home a six pack of skunky, oxidized swill that would make even a wino recoil in horror. Negative reviews taken seriously may help to prevent such a calamity.

Another important consideration for including unfavorable comments about beer is so that readers who don’t share our love of the malt beverage can readily see that we can be objective, and not just grinning, belching sots who can’t distinguish Brooklyn Chocolate Stout from St. Ides Malt Liquor.

Lastly, there are people who know nothing about beer but who know much about what is "in” or fashionable.   These types cheerfully stock up for their soirees and barbecues with Corona, Coor’s Light, and Budweiser,  thinking they’re offering their guests a “choice”.  Of course these same gracious hosts will, if they spot an impossibly expensive display of microbrews, pick up a case or two to really impress their guests.   

Possibly some honest negativity in this column regarding these types of consumption will deter these people from forming incorrect opinions about beer that this type of sampling would assuredly cause.

A recent negative experience I had addresses all three of the above scenarios. Over the last several months, in the liquor store I frequent, there was a large display offering cases or sixpacks of Thomas Jefferson Tavern Ale and

George Washington Tavern Porter. An examination of the bottles supplied the information that they are products from Yards Brewing Company in my favorite city of Philadelphia.  A sign above the display proudly proclaimed that these brews were offered on sale at $12.99/sixpack or $48.99/case. There are too many other great brews available for much less, so I passed this "deal" by.  

My interest was piqued ,however.  A visit to the Yard’s website revealed that these beers were marketed as “Ales of the Revolution”, were based upon recipes from that era, and were brewed in September with alcohol contents of 7% and 8% ,respectively.

Now my curiosity was really aroused, but still I balked at the idea of thirteen bucks a sixpack.  I questioned the proprietor about the sale of individual bottles, to which he responded in the negative.  Each week on  my trip to the store I’d see that display and notice that neither the stock nor the price had decreased.  

Finally, while checking out the stock of individual bottles as I always do, I discovered that the “Ales of the Revolution” had indeed been given a place of honor at $2.50/bottle.   Although the price was even greater than the $49/case I figured I could spend five bucks to try a bottle of each.

I rushed home to put them in my beer refrigerator( every beerfan has a fridge exclusively for beer, no?) to cool while I did some yard work and took a bike ride. Returning home I showered, got out my favorite beer glass, took the “Ales of the Revolution” to the deck and sat down to read Larry McMurtry.

With great anticipation I opened the Thomas Jefferson Tavern Ale and was immediately reminded of British French fries , onto which a copious amount of vinegar had been splashed. Only half the bottle could be poured into the

glass since the over carbonation caused a great, frothy head to rise to the top and cascade down the sides and onto the pages of the McMurtrybook.  

A special bonus of this beer is the “secondary” head! This one came out of the bottle neck like an oil field gusher, and went through the cracks in the picnic tabletop onto my shoes. Holding the bottle up to the sunset, I noticed what

appeared to snowflakes racing madly around the inside. If the Yards company had had a little more foresight, they could have installed little houses or reindeer in the bottoms of the bottles and marketed this crap as snow globes at

Christmastime.

I figured anything that costs $49/case, has to be good and I probably just got a bad bottle, so I dumped the remainder into the window boxes of impatiens (the flowers around the deck seem to thrive on the dregs of last night’s beer

bottles) and uncapped the George Washington Tavern Porter. Unfortunately, ditto except that due to it’s darker color it was harder to see the snowflakes. The flowers had a good night.

“Ales of the Revolution” is an appropriate slogan because the average drinker would easily be revolted by this awful stuff. I think the Continental Army gave barrels of this slop to the Redcoats, who took a sip, promptly surrendered, and returned to England in search of drinkable ale. The rest is history.

At the 8% alcohol level this beer should last longer than the seven months since it was brewed. I’ve had trouble with Yards beers in the past. Sometimes they’re good, often they’re not drinkable. So unless, you want to see for yourself, RUN….DON’T WALK, away from any display of “Ales of the Revolution”! 

 Although I had always liked beer, my induction into the United States Marine Corps and subsequent

assignment to the Quantico Marine Band greatly enhanced my appreciation of the frothy beverage, not

only because I became of legal age during my enlistment, but also because the travels of the band opened up a whole new world of regional brews. Our duties as "musical ambassadors" took us to many areas of the northeast and Midwest which allowed for sampling beers  unheard of back in New Jersey.

Hudepohl and Falls City became entries on my beer log when the band traveled to the Louisville area. Details of how are related in my September 2021 article, "A Love Affair With Beer".

I will never forget the taste of the pitchers of National Bohemian (locally referred to as "Natty Boh") we had after playing at a county fair somewhere on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. The people who had engaged us invited us back to a large outdoor deck featuring newspaper covered picnic tables, mountains of 

steamed crabs and pitchers of Natty Boh. While the scenario and cuisine were a perfect example of Eastern

Shore local color, for me , at least, eating crabs is a pain in the neck: too much work for too little reward. But the Natty Boh made me forget the aggravation and served as a perfect example of why National Bohemian was advertised as brewed in the "Land of Pleasant Living".

Not long after that trip we played in the Miss Wisconsin Pageant Parade in Oshkosh. We were billeted

in a large dormitory on the campus of a local college and immediately after settling in, headed for "town" where we discovered "Peoples" beer and the local favorite, "Chief Oshkosh". Hours later, full of Peoples and Chief Oshkosh, we returned to the billets to discover that the contestants in the pageant were quartered on a different floor in the building. More about that at some other time!

In 1969 the 2nd Marine Division held a reunion in Boston for which the Quantico Band was to supply the

music. We played a parade, a couple of concerts and some ceremonial stuff, and then headed out to check

out Boston. But Faneuil Hall, the Old North Church and the USS Constitution were not on the itinerary that

evening. History and culture could wait until  later as we made tracks for the "Combat Zone", apparently a

version of New York's Times Square former offerings of strip joints, sleazy bars and other attractions for the twenty one year old mindset.

Several of us entered a club which featured ladies two and even three times our age who would cheerfully

remove their G strings for the bargain basement price of a dollar. The only problem was they had it wrong: we were handing them the dollars so they'd put the G strings back on. But the place did offer frosty bottles of Narragansett, and in an attempt to ease the agony on the eyeballs, many 'gansetts went down the hatch.

An elderly DC-3, piloted by the last "flying sergeant" in the Marine Corps took us to St. Louis , where we were to play the National Anthem at a Mets-Cardinals  game. Questioned as to the safety of traveling in an aircraft that old, the Master Gunny assured us that a DC- 3 could be flown into a mountain and the wings would stay on. Very good to know if you ever want to have an intact DC-3 after flying into a mountain! But we obviously got there safely and even though St. Louis is home to the "King of Beers", I was first introduced to Falstaff in that city, and in Granite City, Illinois, where we were staying at a small military base, a little tavern had Hamm's on tap. I can still see the back bar electric sign showing a canoe being endlessly paddled from one side to the other across a sparkling lake. The Hamm's WAS  "as refreshing as the land of sky blue waters"!

After a parade and concert in Mannheim, Pennsylvania, we were divided into groups of four and invited to stay in private homes.  I and three others stayed in a large old Pennsylvania house with a lovely family, and after spending a few hours chatting in their living room, our host at last asked if perhaps we would like to accompany him on a trip to his local club, in those days "clubs" being the only venue for having a beer on

Sunday in Pennsylvania.

I honestly can't remember if it was a VFW or American Legion hall or even a Knights of Columbus or Elks club, but I do recall that Reading beer was abundantly on tap and that marines wearing blues never had to dip into their pockets to buy one. (thankfully....the pockets were all sewn shut, anyway!).

So many Readings were served that our gracious host arrived home that evening being carried at each

extremity by a Marine only slightly more mobile than he. Speaks well for Reading beer as a vehicle to strengthen the relationship between civilians and the military.

A Marine band is always preceded in parades by a color guard made up of local recruiters. The band is led

by an enlisted drum major and the band officer marches to the right of the right guide trombonist in the front rank. The officer is generally responsible for calling the numbers to be played. Such was the scenario for a parade we did in Hudson, New York, at the end of which was a Rheingold truck with tap handles protruding from its side dispensing steins of Rheingold Extra Dry for thirsty parade participants.

As we neared the field where the parade was to disband, the captain called for The Marine's Hymn. While

he was doing so, the drum major called for "Six Bits" (nickname of John Philip Sousa's "Semper Fidelis", so

called because legend has it that Sousa sold the copyright to his publisher in 1888 for seventy five cents) over his left shoulder. Half the band heeded the drum major while the other half launched into the Hymn.

The resulting cacophony caused the captain to vent his displeasure by making us play the Marine's Hymn

again....and again.....and again....! When hearing the Hymn all Marine's must come to attention and so did the color guard, who after furling their flags, had quickly repaired to the Rheingold truck for some refreshment.

 At the first notes of the hymn they properly set down their steins and assumed the position until the Hymn

ended, at which point the steins were again raised to their lips only to be put down yet another time when

"From the halls of Montezuma..." started in again. This was repeated several times before the captain, evidently also feeling the pangs of thirst, relented and led the charge to the Rheingold truck.

But the band didn't have to travel far to enjoy a brew. As in any military town, Quantico had many watering holes and although most just served up the usual Bud, Pabst and Schlitz, it was also home to theGlobe and Laurel, a pub owned by Major Rick Spooner, who gave lectures on the History and Traditions of the Marine Corps and who was the only Marine I ever saw that actually carried a swagger stick.

On a few occasions the band stopped in after a gig to play "The Commercial" (Semper Fidelis and The

Marine's Hymn) and to enjoy a brew. The Globe and Laurel has relocated to Stafford Virginia, just south of

Quantico and proudly serves Leatherneck Lager, brewed by Old Dominion Brewing Company.

On the Quantico base was the "7 Day Store", military equivalent of a 7-11, selling bread, milk, soda,

cigarettes and beer. At one point during my enlistment it was selling Ballantine's for sixty cents/six pack or ten cents/bottle. Since beer was banned in Marine Corps barracks the trunk of my '63 Galaxy convertible was packed to the limit in anticipation of the end of the sale. Even the spare tire had to compete for space. Many cases of Ballantine were delivered to my grandfather in York, Pa. and an equal number made it back to their birthplace in NJ on weekend swoops.

One of my best memories of the close relationship between Ballantine's and the Marine Corps was on St.

Patrick's Day, 1970. We had played a job that morning and had the afternoon off. For some reason I can't

remember, but probably because of a scarcity of funds, I found myself standing on the banks of the Potomac drinking trunk-cooled Ballantine in a drizzle with SSgt Enrique Perales, a Mexican-American from Brownsville, Texas, Cpl. Don Neal, great friend and African-American from Monroe, La. and LCpl John Galuska, Polish- American from Fall River, Mass., certainly an eclectic and unorthodox blend of Paddy's Day revelers. Now that's one great way to promote race relations when you have the Marine Corps, common sense, and Ballantine!

Semper Fid-Ale-is and Cheers,

Dan 

Leaving On A Bad Note

by Dan Hodge

“A guy walks into a bar”…..the opening line of a thousand jokes. But for the thousands who walk in, there’s never a mention of those who eventually must walk (or crawl) back out, so I’d like to devote a little space to leaving a bar. 

Most responsible beer folk and drinkers of other adult beverages usually just pay their tabs, make their

goodbyes and leave the premises as if they were exiting a bakery, drugstore or any other business enterprise. But leaving a tavern is not always done in such a routine manner. Indeed, over indulgence in the products offered sometimes make for far more dramatic exits.

Every old western always showed someone leaving a saloon by being punched through the swinging doors or front window, but one need not return to the glory days of the Old West to observe such athletic departures. On my first return to Buffalo, NY after my marriage to celebrate Thanksgiving with her family, my new wife and I decided to take an early morning walk around her old neighborhood, heavily blue-collar working class and Polish, with one or two tap rooms on every corner.

As we were passing by the appropriately named Stash’s Bar & Grill we were almost hit by the flying body of a third shift foundry worker who had stopped for a few boilermakers after work on the beautiful holiday morn. He was propelled by a large man wearing an apron who could only be Stash, himself, and who was issuing the command “Ged the @#%$!%$ oud an dunt gom beck no more”.

An even better example of the bum’s rush occurred at my 1980’s local, The Swiss Chalet. When an arrogant patron decided to vent his displeasure at being “cut off” by throwing his change at gentlemanly bartender Charley Cybulski.  Sixty year old Charley vaulted over the bar, grabbed the coin tosser by the scruff of the neck and the seat of his pants and forcibly ushered him out the door to the sidewalk where the tipsy fool unwisely decided to fight back, forcing Charley to kick him to the ground. As I was attempting to pull Charley off the unhappy evictee, two other regulars pulled up directly in front of the action on the sidewalk and seeing Charley engaged in fisticuffs rather than tending bar, without so much as batting an eyelash, said “Looks like we’ll have to wait a while for our first beer”.

One leaving a bar doesn’t always have to be propelled by the innkeeper in order to land on the sidewalk. A

former Gaslight (my local in South Orange, NJ) regular used the sidewalk as a landing strip after too many

“Tom Specials” and after missing the three front steps upon leaving the vestibule. He didn’t lose an inordinate amount of blood, but what he did lose was about 80 proof.

A bit more speed and sobriety are required for another way of “leaving on a bad note”: running out on one’s tab, or even worse, running out on one’s tab with your neighbor’s change. Innkeepers have superior memories so this particular exit can never be used more than once in any one tavern.

Occasionally, due to over indulgence or a more serious medical problem a patron may leave the bar on a

stretcher, surrounded by EMTs and tubes. Not a good way to leave , but certainly better than leaving in a body bag as has been happening lately in a nearby city. A bad way for ambulatory drinkers to leave is in handcuffs.

Again in Buffalo, after my wife’s school reunion at a posh country club some of her old classmates

suggested traveling back to their old neighborhood and stopping at Casey’s Bar & Grill. It was a sultry summer night and evidently this caused some tempers to flare. While we enjoying pitchers of Old Vienna in the back room, several of the locals in the front open bar area began to argue and fight. I was fascinated that in the two hours we were there the police were summoned no less than three times and at least four debaters were escorted to the station house in handcuffs via a paddy wagon.

Way back in the 1970’s I was having a beer in a pub that had a back entrance and front door, similar to the

Gaslight. The most interesting bar exit I ever saw happened there. A popular craze in the early seventies

was “streaking”, or removing every last stitch of clothing and running through crowds. This sport was very

popular with the college crowd. No one saw them enter from the rear, but everybody seated at the bar couldn’t help but notice the stark naked couple as they made their au naturel exit through the front door. They didn’t even stop for a quick brew and that was most likely a good thing. They didn’t appear to have their wallets on them!

Enough about leaving a bar. I much prefer to enter one. So I think I’ll pop over to the Gaslight for a pint of the excellent, not to be missed HJS cask conditioned IPA.       

Cheers,

Dan

A Glass Of Beer  

by Dan Hodge

Just as a wine connoisseur wouldn’t think of pouring his vintage sherry into a washed out jelly jar, a true beer enthusiast eschews anything but the proper vessel for his beer.

There are many styles of the malt beverage other than what the uninformed simply refer to as “beer” and each has its own type of glass which complements the style and enhances the taste as well as the obvious benefit of better appreciating the appearance of the beer.

Gone are the days when 90% of the beer that was available to Americans were standard golden lagers, invariably served in shell glasses, footed or stemmed pilsners or steins (these last occasionally frosted….. yeccch!). Little by little American taverns are imitating their European counterparts with a variety of glasses suitable for the particular beers they’re serving.

Most often seen today is the standard “shaker” pint, so named because it resembles nothing so much as a cocktail shaker. This glass is fine for pale ales, IPAs, brown ales and porters, but to drink a plain old lager out of them makes me long for the old days of pilsners and steins. Too many establishments use shakers for everything from Coca-Cola to hefeweizens, but a really knowledgeable tavern keeper selling good beer will also have several other types of glasses to be used for serving his available beers.

To pour a “proper pint” of Guinness into anything other than a British Imperial pint glass is as wrong to beer geeks as making any sense is to Nancy Pelosi. Unfortunately, because of all the Guinness lovers who come out of the woodwork in March, for the next month we’ll also be forced to drink our Guinness out of plastic cups when the St. Patrick’s Day celebrations cause the pubs to run out of glassware.

A special glass to be used for only one style is the traditional tall German hefeweizen glass, and hefeweizen is one style for which there is no substitute glass. As much as I love that beer on a sultry summer day, I’ll do without rather than drink it out of something else.

I like to drink imperial stouts, barleywines and Baltic porters out of snifter glasses. Such beers are meant to be sipped and savored and the snifter is a perfect vehicle for appreciating the nose while allowing  the warmth of your hand to bring a too cold beer closer to the temperature at which it can best be appreciated.

Ornately decorative German steins with hinged lids are always pictured with a smiling and obviously satisfied fat man gazing at his beer, usually with a bunch of radishes or a dead goose on the table in front of him. In addition to their beauty and collectability such steins are also practical: the hinged lids were meant to keep the flies out of your beer. But to me they’re a pain. The raised lid always hits me in the eye when the stein is raised to my lips. Besides, who’s to say a fly can’t get trapped IN your beer by a closed lid?

In Germany, doppelbocks (and some other styles) are traditionally served in earthenware mugs of varying sizes. I’m not a fan of this type of glass, which doesn’t allow you observe the color or size of the head of the beer you’re drinking, but its traditional and, being a “traditionalist, in my house any beer with a name ending in “ator” goes into one.

Also found in Germany is the “boot” glass (sometimes referred to as the “glug glug” glass). This is a glass shaped like a heeled boot which requires some expertise or at least practice to drink from without sloshing the suds all over your chin. Watching some young revelers passing a giant sized boot glass around the table next to us at a pub in Rothenburg inspired some members of my Mummers band to order one. It was great fun watching the beer slop into their faces and cascade down their chests as they tried to master swallowing the last gulp from the boot glass. I stuck to my masskrug.

Although some drinkers don't  like the masskrug because they feel the beer gets too old and warm by the time this one liter stein is emptied, the masskrug has the obvious advantages of delivering more beer with less work and cutting down on dry spells during a beer session.

For those who merely don’t LIKE the masskrug, they're certain to DESPISE another size German stein, rarely

seen because they’re too hard to lift. On the same German trip at which we witnessed the boot glass partyers, we stopped for lunch at a restaurant/butcher shop kind of place serving fresh meats and luncheon fare to local farmers. The portion of wiener schnitzel was more than I could eat in a day, so I should have not been surprised when the waitress asked if we would like glasses with the large beers we had ordered. We declined the offer and said “No…just the beers would be fine. Just bring the beers….LARGE beers.” She returned in a few minutes lugging four steins which looked more like cauldrons. This type of stein contains not one but THREE liters, delivering the equivalent of more than an eight pack of beer to have with your lunch. Even I couldn’t finish that one.

The “triple masskrug” was just a memory until a couple of weeks ago when I noticed several of them on display in the front window of Helmer’s, in Hoboken, a great stop for lovers of German cuisine and beer.

As long as we’re on the subject of steins, another type that was popular a few years ago and sometimes still seen is the pewter mug with a glass bottom. Everyone in my family had one and they all eventually began to leak, but they made nice Christmas presents, especially when engraved with the recipient’s initials. I suspect the real reason for the glass bottom was so an over imbibed drinker who was on the verge of escorting home what he perceived to be a beautiful drinking companion, could look through the bottom while draining his last dregs of the evening and come to his senses. The glass bottoms had a sort of truth feature that transformed what he thought was Cameron Diaz back into Rosie O’Donnell. Yes! The girls all get prettier at closing time unless you’re looking through the clear glass bottom of a pewter mug.

There have been many unconventional types of glasses ranging from the “Yard of Beer” (most often seen at historical restorations and re-creations like Williamsburg or Smithville) and upside down glasses to what I’ll refer to as the “Leute” glass, most of which are for gimmick purposes only and do little to enhance the taste or appearance of beer. But they are uniquely a part of beer culture and so should be mentioned if not in a positive vein, at least negatively.

A couple of years ago my beer club CiC and BeerNexus colleague Vince Capano presented me with a gift package of Leute Bok, consisting of a bottle of the excellent Belgian beer brewed by the Van Steenberge brewery and a round

bottomed glass that came with a small wooden stand with a concave depression for holding the glass, “Leute” means joy in Flemish and it was with great joy that I anticipated my first sampling of this beer. I waited for just the right moment: a cold winter’s night with sleet pelting against the widows, the cats reclining in positions reminiscent of Chinamen in an opium den and the dog resting comfortably at my feet.

I set the little wooden stand conveniently close to the beer book I was reading at my desk, uncapped the bottle, filled the glass, took a sip and carefully set it into the stand. Flipping through a few more pages ,the sips were repeated and the glass set back into the stand uneventfully. Unfortunately, some bit of beer trivia in the book really piqued my interest and, after the next sip, I distractedly set down the round bottomed glass onto my desk top without benefit of the stand. The glass did a sort of roly poly action before unloading its contents onto the desk, and eventually, the floor. At this point the cats and dog quickly awakened from their lethargy and began to investigate the spillage. Perhaps they can give a more informed rating than I on the drinkability of Leute Bok.

From now on it’s flat bottomed glasses only for me and there’s no better time to start than right now. So for now……

CHEERS! 

Dan

Big Beer 

by Dan Hodge

Until recently, in America “bigger” was always better, as in big cars, “big” hair, big oil, Big Macs and King

sized everything. But lately, nutritionists, tree hugging environmentalists and bean counters are crazed about downsizing everything, from the cars we drive to the food we eat. Although the astronomical rise in the consumption of “lite” beer would indicate that beer is also following this trend, for those of us who truly

appreciate the beverage, bigger is still better.

In craft brew circles “big beer” means beers that are aggressively hopped with more body and high alcohol

content. Craft brewers are outdoing themselves with “double” IPAs, Belgian “quadruples”, 12% barleywines

and even “Imperial” lagers. The difference between these styles of “big” beers and the watery “lites”

offered by larger brewers is akin to the difference between Kool-Aid and Johnny Walker Black: night and

day!

But not only craft brewers are into big beers. The relatively recent introduction of the “forty”, containing

forty ounces of high gravity malt liquor has afforded another example of a big beer. Although there are no

“big” hops or body, this style of beer does offer it’s consumers a very economical big drunk. “Midnight

Dragon” isn’t sold in nips for nothing!

Over the years, brewers and retailers of every day American lager have always adhered to the bigger is

better theory. For off-premises consumption beer has been sold in half gallon picnic bottles, gallon cans, “tall boys”, “beer balls”, and anything else that gives the consumer a bigger bang for his buck. In taverns, it’s increasingly difficult to find the old standard seven ounce glass. Most on-premises consumption is now via pint glasses, large steins, pitchers and the occasionally seen “yard” of beer. Even one of the last vestiges of the nip, Rolling Rock, is served in buckets. The bottles may only hold seven ounces but a dozen of them in a bucket equal more than a six pack. The beers may be small but the results are big.

Right here in New Jersey we had the world’s biggest beer bottle which stood for many years over the

Hoffman/Pabst brewery in Newark . This sixty foot tall landmark, is sorely missed by beer lovers and Garden State Parkway motorists, but since it’s been safely placed in storage, who knows, it may rise again, making for the world’s biggest resurrection of a beer bottle.

In Toronto , above Dundas Square , hangs what is probably the world’s biggest dancing beer can. The

thirty foot tall can, which sways back and forth, supposedly would hold the equivalent of 437,000 cans

of Labatt’s Blue, if filled with beer. Undoubtedly, this would result in the world’s biggest keg party if the can

could be tapped.

Labatt’s dancing can may be big, but of course it’s only one. La Crosse, Wisconsin can easily claim title to

the world’s biggest six pack, now painted as LaCrosse cans, but for many years they were proudly labeled

Heileman’s Old Style, as they stood outside the Heileman brewery. Also in Wisconsin , the small town

of Potosi offers beer travelers the unequalled vista of the world’s biggest cone top can, left over from the

days when cone tops were popular with smaller breweries like Potosi that couldn’t afford a separate

bottling line.

But these super sized cans, bottles and six packs pale by comparison to the vat constructed by the Meux

brewery of London . In 1814 the vat, which held 860,000 gallons of porter, burst, thereby creating the

world’s largest beer flood in which twenty Londoners perished, some by drowning, others by over

intoxication and even some who died when the morgue to which they had brought tickets to view the corpses of the drowned, collapsed.

Other aspects of beer history are big as well. Dr. Glendon Bogdon of Wisconsin (the state crops up

frequently when researching beer….they must drink a lot of it there) is the proud owner of the world’s

biggest bar towel, measuring twenty feet by ten feet and which he made by sewing 185 normal sized bar

towels together. Such a towel probably would have come in handy during the beer flood of 1814.

American Ron Werner has managed to amass the world’s largest collection of beer bottles. His total of

11,644 includes 7,128 that are unopened. If he were to throw a little party and offer each attendee three

beers over the course of the evening, he’d have to invite almost 1200 friends in order to run out of beer

before the night was over. Big crowd!

With over 5000 employees the Anheuser-Busch brewery in St. Louis is the world’s biggest brewery.

Unfortunately for me, Budweiser usually gives me the world’s biggest headache, so I try to avoid it.

The Blatz brewery of Milwaukee, Wisconsin at one time employed the world’s biggest beer salesman, Cliff

Thompson, who, at eight feet seven inches tall, looked down on everybody, whether they ordered Blatz or

not. Cliff left the beer selling business to enter Marquette University ’s School of Law . From world’s

biggest beer salesman to world’s biggest shyster in four short years!

The biggest single beer drinking day occurs in our own country. Super Bowl Sunday beats every other day in amount of beer consumed , but the Oktoberfest in Munich is the world’s biggest beer event with over a

million and a half gallons of beer served during the two week period.

The references to big, bigger, biggest and the state of Wisconsin all lead to a fitting end to the discussion of

“big beer”: although drinkers who have downed their beers in close proximity to the Atlantic Ocean might

disagree, it is generally believed that the Glarner Stube restaurant in ,where else, New Glarus , Wisconsin is home to the world’s largest urinal. “Glarner Stube” loosely means “living room of New Glarus, but perhaps a more appropriate name would be “bathroom of New Glarus”.  Due to the size of the urinal, it’s pretty hard to miss, but the dimensions also make it easy to fall into, so be careful how many big beers you have if you visit.

                                                       Cheers!

Dan 

====================

  300! 

by Dan Hodge

The number 300 can represent many things, such as the Gerald Butler movie about the Battle of Thermopylae, the standard for a good baseball batting average, the nameplate of the classic Chrysler sedan or the number of times the average politician lies during a campaign. For a beer lover it can mean a reference to Roger Protz’s “300 Beers to Try Before You Die”. (On that, I have to step up the pace. I consider myself to be a great beer fan and have logged almost 10,600 different beers in my beer drinking life, but I’ve only had 128 of Protz’s 300 and at seventy four I still have 172 to go). But 300 for me stands for a different personal achievement. 300 represents the 300th brewery I’ve visited since July, 1972, when I first toured the huge Anheuser Busch complex in Newark. (Legend has it that tours are no longer given there because they included free tastings at the end of the tour and Newark’s wino population became fond of taking daily tours). 

  In the quest for the perfect pint, I’ve visited breweries in 26 states, 15 foreign countries and 7 Canadian provinces. There were large industrial breweries with official guided tours, craft breweries with informal tours, brewpubs, where food is served along with the beers they brew, small craft breweries with no tasting room or tour, (instead standing right in the brewery next to a fermenter or bright tank with your pint) and breweries with attached biergartens. But no matter what the venue, for the most part all served excellent fresh brews, and no beer is better than a fresh one. To be sure, there were a few which were below average or even horrible, but this article is about pleasant memories, so those few will be saved for a later piece, when I’m in a particularly foul mood. 

  I’ve picked out a dozen or so which were positively memorable, either because of outstanding beer, outstanding ambience or some other idiosyncrasy that set it apart from all others. 

  First and memorable only because it was the first is the aforementioned Budweiser plant in Newark. Nothing wrong with Bud. I just don’t like it. 

  A sentimental favorite was a trip to Pottsville, Pa. And the Yuengling brewery, special because of the classic 19th century brewery building with its stained glass ceiling, and also because my 5 year old daughter lost her stomach perilously close to the mash tun. 

  Before I even knew what craft beer was, my new wife and I celebrated our first anniversary by walking around New York City. We didn’t get stabbed, shot, or pushed in front of a subway train, but did manage to stumble across the now defunct Manhattan Brewery, memorable because of the delivery draft horses that were stabled next door. Shortly thereafter, on a visit to her hometown of Buffalo, we had dinner at the Buffalo Brewpub, my first experience with a restaurant that made its own beer. It offered good beer, good pub grub, peanut shells all over the floor and great examples of old Buffalo breweriana. 

  A perfect example of a brewery with a biergarten was the Augustiner Abbey brewery in Salzburg, Austria. Entering the vast biergarten, we were directed to a room containing shelves with scores of mass and half liter steins. You select a stein, move to a wash rack, then present the newly rinsed stein to a guy sitting next to a large, wooden gravity fed keg, who fills it with Mullnerbrau, after which you select a couple of seats at the long tables under the trees and enjoy. A perfect way to spend a beautiful spring afternoon. 

 I don’t like sour or gueze beers, but as long as we were in Brussels, we had to stop at the Cantillon Brewery which only makes those styles. The ambience of open fermentation, cool ships and a tasting hosted by the brewer himself made for a memorable experience. 

Smoked beer is not a particular favorite of mine, either, but what made our side trip from our Rhine River cruise to the Schenkerla Rauchbier Brewery in Bamburg, Germany memorable was that several of the people we were with weren’t crazy about it as well and slid their untouched steins over to me. Crazy about rauchbier or not, it was as fresh as you can get and I hate to see to see good fresh beer go to waste. 

 A tour for which we had to pay was at the Pilsner Urquell brewery in Pilsen, Czech Republic. The nominal charge was offset by the exhaustive tour which included a movie, bus ride, walking tour through the brewery and packaging plant and of course, a tasting in the dark underground cellars of fresh Pilsner Urquell dispensed right from the fermenting vessel. Also in the Czech Republic, dinner at the oldest brewery in the country, U Flecku Pivovar in Prague, afforded the opportunity to see how beer is dispensed at the 500 year old brewery. You grab a couple of seats at one of the long tables and a guy comes around with a large tray of U Flecku Tmave(dark) brews and slams one down in front of you whether you ask for one or not. Saves time on worthless conversation such as “Would you like a drink?” and “I’ll have a beer. What do you have on tap?” 

The smallest brewery I was ever in had to be the Duke of Duckworth pub in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Primarily known for having the largest selection of taps in Newfoundland, when I was there they also had their own, brewed in what looked like a five gallon homebrew system. It was only average but there were 20 other great brews to choose from. 

 I never imagined France would be a place where I could find a great brewery, but last fall, while walking to the Arc de Triomphe, my wife’s eagle eye spotted a smallish sign on the other side of the street indicating the home of the Frog Brewery, an appropriate name for a brewery in France. Naturally, a stop was made and their version of Burton Ale was so good that if we hadn’t had to board the ship for our cruise to Normandy, I might still be there! 

  A different river cruise on the Danube, found us pulling up to a dock in Bratislava, Slovakia. As my wife was settling in for a nap before dinner, I looked across the river and saw a floating barge sporting a sign that read “Dunajski Pivovar”. I know hardly anything about Eastern European languages, but I DO know that “pivovar” means brewery, and I quickly figured out how to get there without swimming across the Danube. After a lengthy walk and trolleybus ride I arrived at the brewery, discovered they had three brews to choose from, and inquired as to whether they offered flights. “Vas iss dis flights?” asked the man behind the bar, and I told him I’d like to try them all. Forty five seconds later three 8 ounce glasses appeared in front of me, each holding one of the three available brews. When I had finished them and asked the cost, the man replied “No! No! You vas only TRYINK!” Since I had just received 24 ounces of beer for no charge, I felt obligated to buy a pint as well and left on a happy note. 

 A memorable brewery in the US that I recently visited is the Hothouse Brewery in Cicero, NY, near our vacation home. This brewery makes very nice beer and is actually connected with a garden center and greenhouse allowing you buy spring hyacinths along with your IPA. 

The Climax Brewery in Roselle Park, is the type with no official tasting room. You buy a ticket and redeem it for one of the Climax Ales or Hoffman Lagers that are always fresh, and can be drunk next to forklifts, pallets, bottling machines, sacks of malt and everything else that goes into making a brewery. 

I saved the best for last. The Gaslight Brewery and restaurant in South Orange, my home away from home, offers great beer, great food and ,for me, great ambiance since the owners are personal friends. There are always at least six brewed on premises beers available as well as outstanding guest beers, some of which are exclusive to the Gaslight. The cask of Manchester Star bitter which sold out in under an hour was the only one available in the US. My beer appreciation club, Draught Board 15, meets in the upstairs private room and is responsible for many memorable meetings, homebrew competitions, and club sponsored trips such as the annual excursion to TAP New York, featuring hundreds of beers from New York state breweries. 

 The “300” total has already been surpassed since I started writing this piece, so I’ll have to set a new goal. With the numbers of new breweries surging as fast as the latest variant of covid 19, it shouldn’t be too hard to strive for 500. 

Cheers,  

Dan 

Pints of Non-Perfection 

by Dan Hodge

Some years ago the Horlacher Brewing Company of Allentown, Pennsylvania marketed a beer named

“Perfection” in an obvious ploy to induce those seeking a perfect pint to search no further. The “Perfection”

brand was sold in the same package as the Horlacher brand with the only difference being the substitution of the name. Even the script was the same. Although I never drank Perfection, in my early days as a beer

drinker I had a few Horlacher’s and therefore can vouch that if the cans of Horlacher and Perfection held

the same contents, “Perfection” was NOT an appropriate name.

Part of the joy of beer drinking is the eternal search for the perfect pint while secretly hoping it’ll never be

found, giving a justifiable reason to keep trying more and more beer. Searching for the perfect pint is similar to traveling the Yellow Brick Road on the way to the Emerald City, for while the ultimate goal is a highly desirable prize, the snags and pitfalls one finds on the beer quest are equally as horrible as the Winged Monkeys or Wicked Witch of the West.

Bad beer experiences can be classified into several different categories: cheesy marketing, bad taverns,

bad breweries, personal prejudice, spoiled beer and mistakes. I’ve had a few rounds with all of the above

and will therefore digress from my usual admiration for the sudsy stuff to relate a few here.

First: beware the Christmas season! Starting in late October when all of us begin to anticipate the huge and warming beers of winter, brewed by dedicated craftsmen in microbreweries, unscrupulous “beer marketers” begin to cackle and rub their greedy hands together while getting ready to foist their undrinkable swill on the unsuspecting public. These are beers cheaply contract brewed for a marketer who knows nothing about beer, and come with ornate labels, little pamphlets explaining the finer nuances of beer styles and special “holiday” packaging such as small wooden crates stuffed with four bottles of beer and wood shavings for special effect. These things look great under the Christmas tree, but they are best kept intact and unopened to be part of Christmas decorating for years to come. The contents are bland and sometimes undrinkable due to aging.

Sometimes brewers have good intentions even though they don’t know what they’re doing. Any beer lover

looking for a couple of laughs over a pint or two would do well to visit Pubcrawler.com and type in “Gettysbrew”. I’ll say no more. Read the reviews for yourself.. I haven’t had the misfortune of pinting at Gettysbrew, but on a trip to Acadia National Park a few years ago, I did manage to have a lovely dinner with my family at Jack Russell’s Brewpub (aka, Main Coast Brewing Company) in Bar Harbor, Maine, where the excellent food, beautiful “downeast” atmosphere and efficient service could not make up for the sampler of beers presented before dinner, from which I usually select the pints to be had with the meal. These were, without a doubt, the worst tasting beers I’ve ever had. A blonde hefeweizen was indistinguishable from an Imperial Stout. The lemonade I had with dinner tasted pretty good.

Some beers are properly served and are huge sellers but we beer geeks look upon them with disdain. I refer, of course, to the mass produced “lite” beers that are promoted by pit bulls, frogs, and leggy volleyball players in skimpy bikinis. Taste and body are non- existent. I had always thought that nothing could have less taste than Coor’s Light until a year ago, when at the Newark Bears’ opener, I tried an Anheuser-Busch World Select Lager. After a sip I ran back to the concession stand and asked if they had mistakenly filled my cup with Poland Spring. They replied that the

Poland Spring is only dispensed in plastic bottles so what was in my cup must have been the A-B World Select. No matter what world I came from , I wouldn’t select this! It’s definitely the one beer to have when you’re having more than none!

Right here in New Jersey we had the largest brewery ever to make uniformly horrible beer, the Eastern Brewing Corporation of Hammonton, marketers of hundreds of economy, off-brand, and defunct label beers. The flagship brands were Old Bohemian, Old Bohemian Ale, and Old Bohemian Bock which seemed to be differentiated only by the amount of food coloring added to each.

On Staten Island was the R&H brewery, independent before being absorbed by Piel’s in the early fifties. Although I was far too young to have imbibed any R&H before it’s demise, my father assured me that R&H were not the initials of Rubsam and Horrmann, founders of the brewery. He was of the opinion that R&H stood for “Rotten and Horrible”.

Just recently my wife and I spent a few days in Antigua where I discovered Wadadli beer, brewed by the island’s local brewery. It was our first experience with an “all inclusive” resort which meant that one could quaff as many Wadadlis as one wanted , all included in the price of the stay. This was a good thing because Wadadli was just another of the thin Carribbean lagers one finds on these islands. Wadadli is definitely the one beer to have when you’re having more than a hundred. (Editor's note-I will now be checking Dan's expense account very closely.)

Brewer’s attempts at “something new” often lead to disastrous results. At beer festivals we’ve all tasted apricot, cherry, strawberry, and other assorted forays into the fruit and specialty beer field. But twenty years ago, when the craft brewing craze was just getting underway, I bought a bottle of, if you can believe it, mentholated beer from a brewery of which I can’t even remember the name. Trying to get a beer drinker to down this stuff would be harder than than getting a Camel smoker to light up a Kool.

My worst experience with spoiled beer was when my neighbor, an elderly Albanian who had just lost his wife, took to calling me at odd hours for moral support. Answering a request at two a.m. to come over and keep him company resulted in my leaving my warm sack to go next door to be neighborly. To show his appreciation for my nocturnal services he offered me a beer, which turned out to be a bottle of Hensler, last produced in 1957. I actually took a sip, which was enough to make realize that I should have declined the offer. The cap and label

are now part of my collection. The beer fed a nearby African violet!

I’m always amazed that some people in the business of purveying beer in a public house are so clueless about what they’re selling. Last summer I stopped in a nearby pub and discovered that they had McSorley’s Winter Ale on tap. Even though it was July, I stupidly ordered one and immediately realized that the beer was probably not left over from the previous winter, but maybe even from the one before that. When I voiced my displeasure to the barmaid she swapped my pint for something more palatable while saying “I don’t like beer but it tastes OK to me”.

A style of beer I consider to be undrinkable is Gueze, a Belgian style fermented by wild yeasts in open fermenters with cobwebs hanging around and spider droppings falling into the beer. Though there is no proof of this, I believe the word “gueze” is derived from two old Flemish words: “Gue”. meaning “goat”, and ‘Ze”, meaning “piss”. How anyone could like this stuff is beyond my wildest dreams!!

I don’t have to go far to report on brewers’ mistakes, the best of which occurred right in my own backyard. About ten years ago my wife and kids traveled to DC for President’s weekend and I found myself with a whole day on a warm February Sunday to brew what I anticipated to be two batches of beer. I set up my Cajun cooker on the deck, assembled all the necessary ingredients and equipment and got ready to go. Watching the brew kettle while wrestling with the Times puzzle was very pleasant until a breeze arose. The breeze suddenly turned into a heavy wind and

began to blow the flames out from under the brew kettle. Homebrewers being inventive, I went to a neighbor’s garbage and retrieved a large box in which a new dryer had arrived, in order to set up a windbreak. I was quite pleased with my invention and filled in a few more spaces before the phone rang. upon my return to the deck I discovered a scenario that could have been disastrous, but in retrospect was just another funny incident contributing to the brewing of bad beer. 

The wind had blown my cardboard windbreak into the flame, setting it on fire. This conflagration then not only scorched the deck, but also burned through the rubber hose connecting the Cajun cooker to the propane tank. A beautiful flame was shooting out the end of the hose and scorching the leg of the picnic bench. Of course the burning cardboard fell into the brew kettle, which not only doused the flames, but also created the world’s first smoked IPA, if you will. The deck needed only minor belt sanding and refinishing, and the beer only needed to be strained before fermenting, so all was not lost. As for the smoked IPA, it wasn’t too bad if not exactly true to style, and there was actually no hint of the “cardboard” taste associated with over-aged beer. (Probably because the cardboard had been reduced to ashes before it’s accidental inclusion into the wort).

All this talk of rotten and horrible beer has generated a great thirst for a good one, so I think I’ll pop over to the Gaslight for a pint of the new delicious Hopfest! 

“Buying Beer"

by Dan Hodge

Unless you steal it or brew your own, if you want a beer you generally have to buy it. Of course there’s always the freebie provided by the guy who says “This one’s on me”, but since barroom etiquette demands you return the favor , what have you actually gained? In fact it may even cost you more because if you only stopped in for one and some acquaintance on the other side of the bar instructs the bartender to “take it from here”, you now have to buy him one in return, and since it’s impolite to force  him to drink it alone, it requires  having another one yourself. Obviously this could go on all night, which is why I prefer to buy my own beer. My departed former father- in-law also preferred to pay his own way and when going out for a pint with him, I have heard that Virginia gentleman reply to the offer of a beer in his slow Richmond drawl “Thank you, but if you buy me a beer then I’ll have to buy you a beer and I really don’t want to buy you a beer, so I think I’ll just sit here and have a beer with my Yankee son-in-law”. Right to the point!

But whether the beer is paid for by you or someone else, in America it’s price is usually taken from cash

laying on the bar or running a tab and settling up at the end of the pinting session. A recent trip to Scotland reminded me this is not standard practice everywhere. In British pubs you hand your money to the bartender and extend your palm for any change. Almost never do you see money on the bar.

In Germany, Austria, and the Czech Republic beers are just delivered to your table and marks are made on the back of your coaster. No money changes hands until it’s time to leave and the checkmarks are tallied. But the table waitresses have eyes like hawks and memories like elephants so don’t even think you’re ever going to get away with anything like playing musical coasters!

Some, thankfully not all, beer festivals in the United States issue little strips of tickets with your tasting

glass for the admission price, with one ticket being good for one sample. This is probably because some imbecilic nanny state legislator thought this system would help to curtail excessive tasting. But at some festivals I have attended, when your tasting ticket is handed to the pourer, it’s deposited into a large bowl in front of the taps with hundreds of other redeemed tickets eagerly awaiting reincarnation in order to be handed to the next brewer down the line and then taking another rest in his bowl. So much for nanny state mentality attempting to curtail ingenuity.  

Bavarian Oktoberfests in this area also generally use the ticket system but the rigidity of the Teutonic mindset makes certain that “VUN TICKET ISS GUT FOR VUN DINCKELACHER UND DOT”S ITT!!” No tickets are needed, however, for buying beer in Germany from beer vending machines, conveniently located in airport cab stands, railroad stations, parks, museums and highway rest stops.

A precursor to the ticket system of buying beer was the beer token, a wooden nickel proclaiming something like “Good For One Stoney’s Beer”. These tokens could be redeemed at any tavern featuring Stoney’s on tap, and actually became a form of “illegal tender”. A housewife, glomming a Stoney’s token from her sleeping husband’s pants pocket, might barter for some green beans from a thirsty grocer who felt like stopping for a cold one after a hard day’s work.

A modern day example of the beer token is provided by the resurrected Christian Moerlein brewery. This

brewpub, located next to the Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati, in order to recognize a great tradition from the original brewery’s past, offers a pouch of five coins, minted by a local private mint for $25, with each coin redeemable at the pub for one of their house brewed craft beers.

These coins are seemingly inflation proof, making them worth more than US coinage, but I wonder if there’s some sort of disclaimer. If the brewery survives fifty years and a guy walks in with a Moerlein coin purchased for $5 in 2013 attempting to a buy a $30 pint of Saengerfest Lager with it, will the coin be honored? Or will the coin be worth more than the price of a pint to a 2063 breweriana collector? Only time will tell.

One of the strangest systems I’ve seen for buying beer was many years ago on the Canadian side of the

Thousand Islands in a place called The Beer Store. Upon entering you noticed twelve packs of a large variety of Canadian beers displayed on a large wall. You either told the attendant or pointed to which one you wanted, he pressed a hidden button and the desired twelve pack suddenly appeared at the bottom a nearby roller chute. Luckily, my Labatt’s IPA came correctly as ordered, but if a twelver of Mooshead had arrived incorrectly was I going to be expected to push it back up the chute?

Airports are notorious for their usurious charges on everything so I wasn’t too surprised when I was

charged $4 for a Pabst Blue Ribbon forty years ago at Newark. But what was amazing to me at the time was HOW I was charged. The frosted stein was place under a tap, a button was pushed, the suds flowed into the glass, shut off when full and “ka-ching” was automatically heard from the cash register.  At $4 for a

PBR in 1973 I wasn’t going to have another anyway, but certainly flight delayed folks who wanted more than one sure as hell weren’t going to get one on the house.

A great way to buy beer was one I was not lucky enough to have experienced. In Will Anderson’s “Beer

USA” is a full page photo of the Texan Hotel Drugstore in Dallas. On the front of the building in addition to two signs informing potential patrons that prescriptions could be obtained within, were FOUR signs proclaiming “Look! All the Schepp’s Beer (aged in redwood) you can drink….60 cents per hour”. But this was not as good as it seems. The picture appears to be circa 1935. A minimum wage was not introduced until 1938 and then it was only a quarter an hour, so a drinker would have to spend about two and a half hours worth of pay to drink an hour’s worth of Schepp’s.  The average price of a beer in 1935 was a dime so at least seven glasses would have to be downed to make the hour worthwhile. And there’s no mention of overtime possibly costing time and a half!

For all those who buy beer there are also some who DON’T buy beer. There are always the sneaky change

stealers thinking no one is watching while they move bar cash from in front of you to in front of them. But

sneakier than the change stealers was the former Gaslight regular who, although he was willing to buy his

own, ( on a house tab, of course) had just been cut off due to over- imbibing. Undaunted by this sad turn of events and desiring more beer, while I was engaged in conversation, he simply poured the contents of my pint into his empty glass. Somehow, you have to admire that kind of spunk.

The Richmond, Fredricksburg and Potomac Railroad runs through the Quantico Marine Base and separates the base from the town of Quantico, home to a number of drinking establishments, one of which was located only forty feet or so from the tracks. Occasionally, cashless Marines, finding themselves thirsty a few days before payday, would wait until a train stopped, blocking the main street. Timing their getaway, they would wait until the train barely started to move again, madly race out of the saloon and duck under the train while running out on their bar tabs. By the time the train was gone, they were gone.

But that only works once and is extremely dangerous so it’s a pretty poor way to not buy beer, especially in

light of the fact that Ballantine beer could be purchased on the base for a mere sixty cents a sixpack.

Recently I stopped in a pub which shall remain nameless for a cold beer on a sweltering summer afternoon. This pub is known for its very decent selection of craft taps and it’s open air front. I just wanted one and laid a twenty on the bar while the barmaid was pouring my pint. Setting the glass in front of me and picking up the twenty, she asked if I had anything smaller to which I replied in the negative. She then told me she had no change, possibly hoping I would say “keep it”.

Since I was only having one, that certainly wasn’t going to happen, so I offered my credit card, but she pointed to sign that said “minimum credit card charge $10.” We were at an impasse, but not wanting to be a deadbeat and not blaming her for her boss’s failure to provide her with a cash drawer, I went next door to a bank to make change so I could buy my beer. What a way to run a business!

Thinking about that incident makes me a little thirsty, so I think I’ll go buy a beer. (After making sure I have various denominations of money in my kick).

Cheers!

It’s Getting Hard to Keep Up!   by Dan Hodge

For a beer lover that especially likes to try new brews and breweries, the age we live in is reminiscent of a kid in a candy shop: so many choices. With new breweries opening almost weekly, it’s extremely difficult to keep up. In fact, New Jersey, alone, a state which lagged way beyond most of the other states in numbers, is now home to over 130 breweries. And that doesn’t count the score or more which have opened and closed; Uno’s, Port 44, Raritan Bay, Jersey Jim’s, The Ship Inn, and Demented to name a very few.

I’ve visited ninety or so Jersey breweries and , as to be expected, found some outstanding, most average, and one or two, horrible. Some are very customer friendly and few seemed to care less whether you stopped in or not. Some follow the letter of the law regarding “tours”, music, etc. while others completely (and thankfully) disregard many stifling governmental restrictions. Some have opened with ambitions of operating a distributing brewery with a tasting room, while others have gone into business with the sole intention of running a taproom to sell beer in direct competition with local liquor license holders.

All that being said, during the horrible “covid year” of 2021 I managed to visit eighteen new breweries which either just opened their doors or which opened before 2021, that I hadn’t as yet gotten around to visiting.

There’s no better place to start than January, so on January 3rd I went to the Bull and Bear brewery in Summit and found some very good brews, with service being a little slow and no bar to sit at, making conversation somewhat difficult if you’re alone. Also in January, I drove all the way to the Sunken Silo in Lebanon, only to discover that they don’t do flights “because of covid”. Covid knows the difference between a 5 ounce sampler glass and a pint? Therefore I was only able to try two beers which probably would have tasted better if they hadn’t been served in a crummy solo cup. (Covid can also differentiate  plastic from glass).

In March, on the way home from antiquing in Easton, PA, we stopped at Invertase in Phillipsburg. I had two quick pints, both of which were pretty good, especially the Fox Paws Bohemian Pils. March also allowed for a stop at Red White and Brew in Audobon, which offered average brews that were made tastier by enjoying them with a half dozen fellow Mummers after a parade. The ambiance is wonderful.

April and May were dry months for trying new breweries, but in June, I and another fellow Mummer stopped in at Conclave in Flemington (Raritan Township) after a parade. This brewery is outstanding. They don’t do flights, either, but they offer eight ounce glasses at a pretty low price. Especially memorable was their English Rain ESB. Several more post-parade stops have been made.

A brewery I visited for the first time in July despite the fact that it’s the closest to my home and had been open for many months prior, is Lion’s Roar in Westfield. The reason for the delayed visit was that when they first opened, one was expected to call ahead and make a reservation to block out ninety minutes of time. A little much just to drink a beer to my way of thinking. But finally they opened in a normal way, so I gave them a try. The Count the Teslas Kolsch was excellent. I stopped in again a couple of weeks ago and had two flights, both excellent, and foresee popping in many more times in the future.

August brought something like the best of breweries, the worst of breweries. After a day of sun and surf at Island Beach I stopped at Tom’s River Brewery on Rt. 37. The Oktoberfest and the Dublin Workingman’s Porter were very solid. I’ve been back twice. But also in August, I took a Sunday afternoon drive to Wayne and the Seven Tribesmen Brewery. The trip was memorable but not for particularly good reasons. After I had parked and was walking in the door, a member of the staff stopped me and said there was a private party inside and that I would have to sit in the biergarten, which I would have preferred, anyway. I asked if they did flights, to which he responded in the affirmative and led me to a table in the garden. He handed me a beer list and said someone would be with me shortly. Fifteen beer-less minutes later “someone” appeared and it turned out to be him. When I asked for a flight, he said they only do flights inside and not in the biergarten. Recalling the amount of time required for “someone” to arrive at my table , I wisely ordered two pints in order to stave off thirst after the first was kaput. After about ten minutes the pints arrived, but in Solo cups with lids put on so tightly that a good portion of the beer wound up on the tabletop when I attempted to remove them. The beer was okay, but not worth a second trip.

In September, I met my ex-neighbor and good friend at Alternate Ending Brewing in Aberdeen, one of the very few startups that is also a brewpub, offering pub grub as well as outstanding beers. I’ve subsequently been there several times and highly recommend the Day After Yesterday Barleywine when it’s available. After a parade at Glassboro College I stopped at Neck of the Woods Brewing in Pitman and particularly liked the Oktoberfest and Chuppta IPA. It’s located in an industrial park and therefore parking is easy and plentiful. That same day I tried Human Village Brewery for the first and last time. Last, because the beers were not good and also because they’ve shut their doors for good as of 12/31/2021.

October afforded visits to three new breweries, two of which just opened and one that has been around a few years, but which I had never been to. Old Hights Brewery in Hightstown, open only a month or so, had two excellent brews: Engine 6 Scottish Ale and Tree Hugger Red IPA. Seven Sons Brewery in Howell had eight beers on tap and six of the eight I considered excellent with the Kats in Maus Hefeweizen being outstanding. My sister and I traveled an hour to Tinton Falls to visit Jughandle Brewery, a trip which would have been better if we hadn’t made it. The beers were just average and the ambiance lacked any character at all.

Parades, or driving home from them are great excuses for stopping at breweries. So it was that after the first Christmas parade of the season in November, I stopped at Ashton Brewery in Middlesex, housed in the former home of the aforementioned, now closed, Demented Brewery. It was a little pricey, but the Fraximus English Barleywine was worth it. Also in November and much closer to home is the Glenbrook brewery in Morristown, a huge venue with an extremely personable and likable owner, who seemed to be the only staff around on my visit. But that made no difference, as his service was superior to many places who have servers that were trained by the US Postal Service in the discipline of speed.

December saw visits to three more brand new Jersey breweries. Again after a Christmas parade, the route home took me right past the Readington Brewery and Hop Farm on Rt. 202 South in Neshanic. Well, maybe not RIGHT past, since I was heading north. But the two U-turns required for the visit were well worth it. It will be even better in summer when the hop vines are growing, but in December it’s a beautiful place anyway. It’s a brand new building, built to house a brewery and tasting room, there’s plenty of parking, a picnic area next to the future hop farm, and I found three of their beers, Liberator Barleywine, The Patriot IPA, and the 1814 Irish Stout to be excellent, with the stout getting four stars on my personal rating system. Not so excellent was the South Forty Brewery in Edison, located in what looked to be the same industrial park, Raritan Center, as Cypress Brewing. Nine beers were available, none of them very good, with one being undrinkable. What made it interesting is that the brewer decided to name it “I F——-Up Barleywine”, as the reason why it was terrible. The girl working the bar told me the reason but I must admit I have forgotten it. Suffice to know that it was an excellent example of being f——-up, and the counterpart, “I Didn’t F—-Up Barleywine”, a beer in which the error had supposedly been corrected, wasn’t much better.

The last new brewery in 2021 is one that I sincerely hope succeeds because it’s in my hometown of Newark, but I’m sure it’s location on high rent Broad Street, coupled with NO parking and Newark’s partially undeserved reputation for being dangerous, make for a tough road ahead. My first trip, just before Christmas, was a little hectic , dodging hundreds of busses and trolleys and traversing a dozen one way streets trying to find a place to park. Thirty minutes later, I parked on University Avenue, just off Orange Street and walked the seven or eight blocks to 538 Broad, directly across from the Washington Park light rail stop. Their website advises that it’s only a three minute walk from the Newark Museum and you can park in the museum lot for a fee, but if you’re not afraid you can always park where I did and witness a car-jacking, mugging, and rape during your walk. (ONLY KIDDING….it’s a perfectly safe area). The guy behind the bar was very friendly and informative and when I asked why there were no dark beers, he said a porter would soon be up. When I stopped in a month later, he remembered me and asked if I had returned for the porter, which was freshly tapped and excellent. I wish them luck.

New breweries are a definite positive for the local economy and the beer lover, and with the spate of new ones opening, it’s definitely getting harder to keep up. But it’s great fun trying!

Cheers, 

Dan

Almost daily we hear or read about America's problem with obesity, usually blamed on fast food, overeating, and our largely (no pun intended) sedentary lifestyle. To help alleviate this problem millions of dollars are spent on gym memberships, personal trainers, exercise equipment and nutritional supplements. All types of diets and other regimens of self sacrifice are practiced with spotty results, often, when the anticipated goals are not immediately achieved, causing many of the dieters to despair and just give up. This feeling of hopelessness is the result of no immediate reward for their sacrifices.

Beer drinkers, however, have an alternative way to stay fit and be instantly rewarded for their efforts. "Beer My Way" now proudly takes this opportunity to show readers how to shed a few pounds by simply drinking more beer and performing a few inexpensive "beer exercises".

"The Beer Stepper"

Most lazy Americans struggling with extra poundage just open the refrigerator door when they're thirsty for

a brew, which requires hardly any energy at all. But an astute and weight conscious beer man always makes use of a beer stepper by simply situating his beer fridge on a different level in the house than the one on which he intends to drink the beer. By doing so, another beer

requires at least thirteen steps up or down and back.

If friends are visiting he only retrieves one beer at a time. The friends may temporarily miss him, but they've got each other to talk to while he's busy running up and down the stairs. A great way to burn calories at no cost! For those who live in a ranch house with no basement, a six foot step ladder placed in front of the fridge serves the same purpose if one always remembers to scale up one side of the ladder and down the other when getting another beer.

 "The Keg Lift"

This is a no brainer. Just throw frequent keg parties, always buy half barrels, and hand carry them home from the liquor store. Excellent for arm and back strengthening and cardio vascular training.

"The Case Schlep"

This exercise requires an occasional motor trip to Pennsylvania. Drive to a beer distributor in the Keystone

State and pick up four cases of Stegmaier's, Straub's or any beer still sold in sixteen ounce deposit bottles.

Bring the cases home and carry them to the garage. Set two aside for drinking and place the other two, one on top of the other, on the floor in front of a five foot high shelf. Keeping the back straight and bending the knees, pick up the top case and place it on the shelf. Repeat with the bottom case and place it on top of the already shelved case, then reverse the operation until both cases are returned to the floor. Fifteen or twenty repetitions are an excellent workout for the upper arms, legs, and back.

 "The Mass Hoist"

This exercise is great for conditioning the biceps and forearm, especially for those in training for arm wrestling competitions. Always drink your beer from a liter size or "mass" stein, keeping the forearm level with the bar when raising the stein to your lips. This type of workout has instant gratification, but lest one arm gets stronger than the other, it's recommended to switch arms with every other beer.

 "The Digital Rejuvenator"

Most people never consider the fingers or hands when working out but without fingers there is little one can

accomplish in life. That's why beer drinkers constantly exercise the hands and rarely suffer from carpal tunnel syndrome. Using the forefinger to pop the top on a can, the thumb and forefinger to unscrew a screw cap, wrapping the hand around a stein during the Mass Hoist and manipulating church keys and bottle openers are great ways to keep one's fingers and hands in shape.

  "The Dune Walk"

Perhaps the most exhausting beer exercise is the Dune Walk and the requirement of a partner to perform it is proof of this. Load an eighty quart Coleman cooler with a case and a half of cans of your favorite session beer and a chopped up twenty five pound block of ice. Drive to Island Beach State Park (or your own favorite seaside) and park at one of the smaller, non-guarded beaches. Place the cooler on the ground and on top of it stack a beach blanket, umbrella, two beach chairs, a radio, some books and bag of sandwiches and sunscreen. With you on one side and your partner on the other, pick up the cooler by its handles and begin the quarter mile trudge in the blazing sun over the burning sand of the dune. Every fifty yards or so it will become necessary to switch arms before continuing the trek. Be especially careful at this juncture since the heat of the blinding sun often causes the arm switchers to become disoriented and actually start heading back towards the car.

Occasionally the extreme effort required by the Dune Walk makes the Dune Walkers say to hell with it, throw the chairs ,umbrella,  and other stuff off to the side, open the cooler and start downing brewskis without ever catching even a glimpse of the ocean. But dedicated and persistent Dune Walkers soon find

themselves oceanside, enjoying salt water and liquid gold and feeling great after a tough workout.

 "Beer Biking"

Bicycling is a great moderate exercise enabling the cyclist to observe things not readily visible when

speeding by in an automobile. But too often cyclists just aimlessly cycle around with no definite destination in mind. The beer biker, however, just heads towards his favorite brewpub, accomplishing a workout both before and after enjoying a few pints. And he doesn't have to worry about driving home!

"The Ale Swim"

Take a vacation at a resort that has an "underwater" bar or at least a bar located near a pool. Position your

chaise lounge as far away from it as possible and take frequent swims to the bar for an ale using any vigorous stroke such as the Australian Crawl or breast stroke. An excellent way to work the muscles used in swimming with a definite and rewarding purpose in mind.

"The Rolling Rock Climb"

This isn't as dangerous as it sounds, since it doesn't actually require one to climb up a rock. Just go on a

picnic and station a cooler full of icy Rolling Rock nips on top of a steep hill near your picnic spot. When you want  beer climb up the hill and get one. Getting more than one at a time defeats the purpose, so be sure to make frequent trips up the hill for a good cardio workout.

"The Beerobic Dance"

The final workout is one that's  necessitated by performance of the preceding beer exercises and one which puts all parts of the body into active and vigorous use. When the first inkling of a need for a trip to the

men's room becomes apparent, hold off as long as possible, preferably until the last second. Then race

madly to the facilities and get in line. The Beerobic Dance works out the legs as you hop from

one to the other, the knees as you squeeze them together, and even the teeth and jaw as you wince in

pain. In addition , to quote Satchel Paige, the "jangling" of your arms really "gets the juices flowing!

It's time for a little workout. I think I'll go do a couple of

Mass Hoists. 

Cheers and Happy New Year!

=========================

Have Yourself A Beery Little Christmas by Dan Hodge

The highlight of the year for all beer lovers has to be the Christmas season. For generations breweries have brewed special Christmas beers as a way to enhance the celebration of this most festive of seasons, and as a result, perusing the seasonal displays of the liquor stores makes a beer fan feel like a kid in a candy shop. Christmas (or, for the politically correct, “holiday”) beers can be anything from spiced ale to imperial stouts and porters, to winter warmers, or even imperial lagers. But in spite of what style it is, a Christmas beer is meant to be savored in the special ambiance of a Yuletide gathering.

Many Christmas beers have appropriate names to designate them as such without having to resort to the

generic “Christmas Ale”, “Holiday Brew”, or other equally bland titles. Portland’s “Santa’s Little Helper”, Rogue’s

“Santa’s Private Reserve”, Troeg’s “Mad Elf”, Diamond Knot’s “Ho! Ho!”, Bateman’s “Nosey Rosey”, Shelton Bros.’ “Pickled Santa”, DeRanke’s “Pere Noel”, Full Sail’s “Wreck the Halls” and Sam Adams’ “Old Fezziwig” can all be identified as special Christmas beers without ever seeing the word “Christmas”. Britain’s Ridgeway Brewing

outdoes them all. I have had five of their beers brewed especially for the Christmas season: “Bad Elf”, “Very Bad Elf”, “Seriously Bad Elf”, “Insanely Bad Elf” and the ever popular (except in states where the idiot label police have banned it), “Santa’s Butt”.

In my opinion, the greatest Christmas beer ever made was the iconic “holy grail” of beers, Ballantine Burton Ale. Brewed only twice, on May 12, 1934 and May 12, 1946, the super strong (for that time) brew was then stored in huge wooden vats in the brewery’s basement until being drawn of at Christmastime to be bottled with a special Christmas label denoting the bottling date and for whom it was bottled, and given away as presents to dignitaries, employees and friends of the brewery.

I recently spoke to a man who worked at Ballantine’s and he related how the US Secret Service was present to oversee the bottling of several cases labeled specifically for President John F. Kennedy. This beer is still available via E-bay and a few years ago our beer club bought one for a princely sum. (See Vince Capano’s Adventures in Beerland article “You Spent 99 $#@%& Dollars on a Bottle of Beer?)

But modern day beer fans don’t have to spend quite that much. Thanks to the expertise and inquisitive historical mind of Pabst (they now own the rights to the Ballantine brand) head brewmaster Greg Duuhs, 2015 marks the first time this beer has been available to the general public. But unfortunately it’s no longer for free.

I had my first taste on tap at the Gaslight Pub, proudly serving what was perhaps the first ever Burton that was paid for. But a week or so later I ventured into the Liberty Tavern and discovered the holy grail on tap there as well, served in a FROSTED full pint. Probably NOT the intention of Mr. Duuhs, nor any other knowledgeable beer geek.

A childhood Christmas tradition in my house, like many others, was leaving a snack for Santa and his reindeer, but with a different slant. My father, known to close friends as “Iron City Bob”, felt that after visiting a billion homes and downing milk and cookies in most of them, Santa most likely desired something a tad stronger to sustain him through the rest of his stops, so the Hodge children always left a bottle of Iron City and a plate of cheese and crackers for Mr. Claus and occasionally some pretzels for the reindeer. Proof that Santa had visited was offered not only by the mounds of presents under the tree, but also by the empty beer bottle and cleaned plate!

I have previously written about Christmas decorating with beer, including tree garland made from pop tops

and miniature beer can ornaments, not to mention the “tree” made from beer bottles I observed at the Steigel brewery in Salzburg, Austria. But just this afternoon as I was trimming my tree, the beery aspects of Christmas decorating came much closer to home. Among the hundreds of ornaments I was hanging were pilsener glasses, frothing mugs, little lederhosen-clad German men hoisting steins and frauleins holding six of them in each hand. Gazing at the tree with a beer in your hand while people in the tree with beers in their hands are gazing back makes Christmas celebrating much more pleasurable.

Unfortunately, as in many other areas of our consumer- driven society, brewers are not immune to rushing the

season. It’s now customary to see the first Christmas beers appearing on the retailer’s shelves in October, and

therefore some of the most sought after versions have to be purchased then, because by Christmas Eve they’ll be gone. But while Santa is busy loading his sleigh, you can probably buy all the “spring ales” your heart desires.

Two highlights of the beery Christmas season happen very close to home. The Gaslight’s Victorian Christmas

Dinner is a gourmet seven course meal with each course complemented by a beer and wine specially paired to

what’s being served. The dinner is preceded by a “cocktail” hour featuring new and vintage Christmas beers as well as mulled wine for those unenlightened folks who don’t appreciate great beer.

Very close to home, in fact IN it, is the annual Hodge Christmas beer tasting at which draught Board 15 cask

Commissioners and an occasional guest drinker assemble around my dining room table between Christmas and New Year’s to taste and rate varied examples of Christmas, Holiday, and “winter” brews. We have had as many as 62 on one occasion but usually we are in the 40-50 range. The tasting is done blind so as not to unfairly prejudice the palates of the tasters and even though after 40 or 50 some people might think we know not what we’re drinking, amazingly Sierra Nevada’s Celebration Ale and Clipper City’s Winter   Storm always finish in first and second place.

This should prove that despite sampling 50 beers, the Cask Commissioners are discriminating beer connoisseurs who really know a good one when they taste it. But this year maybe I’ll put off serving those two until the end. That way, we’ll know for sure whether or not they’re really the best.

Have yourself a Beery Little Christmas and by the way, clusters of hops make a nice substitute for mistletoe!

               Ho, Ho, Ho --  Cheers! 

DAN THE BAPTIST  by Dan Hodge

Just as John traveled around baptizing future Christians in water, so have  I spent some time and taken great pleasure from baptizing future beer geeks in beer. Of course, to equate the two is ridiculous and belittling to John the Baptist but there is a similarity in the degree of satisfaction achieved by both of us in bringing newcomers into the fold.

I had long wondered (and still do) how so much Coor’s Light can be sold while the craft beer aisles grow by leaps and bounds, with new breweries and brews appearing every day. Obviously a good part of the reason is that few persons have spent the time necessary to convert the unsaved and field the retorts of potential converts, figuring that it’s just not worth the aggravation, even though the conversion process invariably involves the drinking of beer.

To be sure, not all Coor’s Light drinkers can be made to see the light and even those that do occasionally have to be converted in stages. Offering a can of Yuengling Black & Tan to a thirsty Coor’s man is perhaps a baby step on the road to craft beer but you have to start somewhere, and once he’s received his first communion with Yuengling, his confirmation with Sierra Nevada or Victory will be much easier. But sometimes, even if the original baby step is taken, the prospective convert will get mired in the Yuengling and never make the final transition to “real” craft beer, as in the case of my first novitiate, my friend Ted.

Ted was addicted to Stroh’s in its iconic blue cans. We usually took turns wandering into each other’s

backyards to see what the other was up to and the wanderer was always greeted with the words “Do you want a beer?” That question was always answered “Yes”, but if I happened to be the wanderer my positive response would be fulfilled with the Stroh’s which tasted like Coor’s in which someone had soaked rusty nails for a couple of weeks. But when Ted wandered into to my backyard he invariably was offered something much better than Stroh’s, perhaps a Cricket Hill Hopnotic IPA or Berkshire Oktoberfest. So, in order to even the playing field, I had to get Ted to stock something that would provide me with suitable beer when I entered his backyard and the obvious way to do that was to

convert him.

Little by little, stimulated by the always excellent craft brews I provided for him, his palate began to revert back to his German heritage and soon I was offered bottles of beers such Hacker-Pschorr Oktoberfest and Paulaner Hefeweizen.  However,Ted himself did a little backsliding and now rarely drinks anything other than Yuengling lager, a good every day brew and certainly many steps ahead of Stroh’s, but definitely not a craft beer. He’s made his first communion, but is still years away from confirmation.

A Friday afternoon ritual in our suburban neighborhood was watching the Paul , my across the street neighbor, exit his car after work toting his “suitcase” 30 pack of Budweiser cans. Here too, was a man who was not to be diverted from his devotion to Bud. That is until I invited him (and Ted) to accompany me to a Friday night “tour” of Cricket Hill Brewery.  Downing a half dozen pints and purchasing a case of East Coast Lager to enjoy at home was proof positive that this was a man who was ready to repent.

With further encouragement from his friend, The Screwy Brewer, (innovator of a homebrewing website of the same name) his beer revival was in full swing and the final conversion may well now be complete. Just a week ago he announced to me that he hadn’t had a Budweiser in months and when preparing for a party at his home, he handed his son $100 and told him to go get some good beer for the festivities!

With friendly persuasion and occasional badgering by me, ALL of my siblings are now craft brew enthusiasts. Even my sister Jane, former fan of Coor’s light, now makes sure that decent brew is always available for family gatherings at her house.

Sometimes in the conversion process Satan rears his ugly head and fights tooth and nail to keep beer

drinkers in HIS fold. Recently, on our annual St. Patricks Day four day sojourn in Western Massachusetts my Mummers band was fulfilling one of its obligations by playing a concert at Smith’s Billiards in Springfield. Smith’ s has a wide and varied selection of craft brews available on tap. (See Beer my Way article “Mum’s the Word…for Beer!”).Looking at the board on which the beers were

listed, and respecting my well known penchant for craft beer, long time member and friend Tom Maminski said “Okay, Hodge, I’m ready to try something new. What do you recommend?” I was astounded! I had never seen Tom drink anything other than Bud Light and on many occasions had even heard him expound on its goodness. Surely, here was a man ready to see the light and be saved!

Not wanting to overwhelm him with an Oaked Imperial Stout, Belgian tripel or Quadruple IPA all of which were prominently listed on the board and which could easily make him revert back to watery Bud Light, I studied the offerings for just the right beer for his first foray into the world of craft and decided on a nice, unassuming saison. We ordered it and I was pleased to see that it was poured into a proper stemmed glass. I carefully advised him how to smell it, observe its color and taste it, looking for all the flavor notes a saison should have. He did all that and said “Hey! This isn’t bad!” I figured I

had brought another errant lamb back into the fold. But I was hasty. Satan must have been working on him also. Shortly after playing our next set, I noticed Tom ordering another of the scores of Bud Lights he would consume that weekend. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink!

My proudest achievement in the conversion process is my new neighbor Matt Chuchla, native Buffalonian and active duty member of the US Coast Guard. When Matt moved in two years ago I welcomed him to the neighborhood by engaging in conversation over the fence between our yards. After a short while we got talking about beer and Matt informed me that having grown up so close to the land of the maple leaf, he was extremely partial to Canadian beers. He praised Molson, Sleeman’s, Moosehead and even the bland Labatt’s Blue. Obviously this was a new challenge for Dan the Baptist.

I had just returned from a trip to restock the beer fridge and had probably 10 or 12 different brews

available in addition to a couple of homebrews. Several hours later, legless and wavering, Matt returned to his abode with his belly full of Victory Hop Devil, Lakefront Big Easy maibock, Sam Adams Boston Ale, Dog Fish Head Raison d’etre and Hodge’s Raj IPA. It was almost too easy. I wondered if perhaps the great onslaught of craft brews would confuse him and make him long for the comfort and familiarity of Labatt’s Blue. But my worries were needless. In fact, I may have created a monster. Matt eagerly became a dues paying, card carrying member of my beer club, theDraught Board 15, and a regular patron of the local Gaslight Brewery who wonders why their “Governator” Vienna Lager is only available once a year.

Matt has accompanied me on  a few Friday night visits to Climax brewery, was a very early sign up for the New York TAP beerfest trip and I haven’t seen an empty Molson bottle in over a year. It’s not unusual for him to say “I just went to store and got a case of Sam Adams Cold Snap. We’ll have to have a few later”. This fall he drove himself crazy trying to find more Flying Dog Dead Rise Summer Ale with Old Bay seasoning. It was heart rending having to explain to him that it was a summer

seasonal and it wouldn’t reappear before next summer. Just a short time ago I was listening to the Mets at my picnic table and he came into view carrying a large bottle of Ommegang Brewery’s Three Philosophers Quad. A few of those and you’ll be down for the count by the seventh inning stretch!

Hallelujah! If I ever decide to put up a tent and hold a beer revival meeting, Matt will definitely be called upon tooffer the first testimonial! Amen, brother! 

   Church Keys Don’t Really Open Churches!

by Dan Hodge

Normally, when  speaking of beer  “adjuncts”, we are referring to corn, rice, herbs or other ingredients added to beer in defiance of Reinheitsgebot, the German purity law which defines water, hops, malt and yeast as the only four  things allowed in the brewing of beer. However, the brewing industry extends far beyond the serious business of just

making and drinking the stuff, and here , too, adjunct uses for the other factors in the industry come to the forefront of consideration.

Before revealing some of those adjunct uses, however, as an addendum to last month’s article detailing alternative uses for beer itself, I’d like to present yet another valuable reason why beer is so widely loved and appreciated!.  Somehow I forgot to mention that beer can be an effective unit for the measurement of time and distance. Although this use is not recommended (in fact definitely DISCOURAGED) in today’s politically  correct and temperate society,  

not too long ago a group of fishermen, planning a weekend trip “to the lake” and asked by a newcomer how long of a drive it was, might answer “about five beers”.  “Swooping” home on a liberty weekend from Marine Corps Base, Quantico, Va. to Jersey required about three and a half hours, ten gallons of gas @ 29 cents/gallon and five Ballantine’s @10 cents/bottle. Ballantine was a more economical fuel than Gulf No- Nox!

But I digress. Back to the alternative uses of beer marketing’s adjuncts: A whole industry has been born around the non-ingestive aspects of beer.   Memorabilia concerning the beverage, better known as "breweriana”, has spawned many national and international clubs whose members meet regularly to buy, sell trade and covet millions of dollars worth of brewery advertising, that for the most part, was given away gratis by beer salesmen to induce retailers into bigger orders. Members of these organizations have been known to go into cardiac arrest when unearthing an “Amana” beer can at a garage sale, resort to violence over who saw a pristine Ebling’s beer tray first at a flea market, and trade away their wives for a patch ripped from the sleeve of a pre-prohibition Esslinger’s beer truck driver. In addition to the collectability of these items, all had other uses than that for which they were originally produced.

Canned beer , first introduced by the Gottfried Krueger Brewing Company of  Newark, enabled retailers to cram more beer into less space, imbibers to drink colder beer with less chance for spoilage, and brewers to eliminate the need for washing and refilling deposit bottles. In the seventy years since, in addition to being drained for liquid refreshment, billions of cans have been collected, shot at, and pyramided in dormitory windows, the obvious adjunct uses of this wonderful marketing innovation. But there are more: In the good old days of steel cans I remember  some parties ending with “grown ups” stamping around the cement backyard in Newark with empty cans of Hensler or Knickerbocker securely attached to their shoes, emulating James Cagney dancing to “Yankee Doodle Dandy”.

In the same spirit of The Glorious Fourth, it was possible to blow one’s fingers off in a more American way than by using fireworks imported from Macau. Five steel beer cans, with the tops and bottoms removed, except for the bottom can, taped together with duct tape and primed with a squirt of lighter fluid, would produce a sound like a Howitzer when a Zippo was ignited near the end. I am told that these pieces of breweriana artillery will even shoot a potato for

quite some distance, although I have never seen this done nor do I know why anyone would wish to do so.

Every so often, one reads in the Feature section of the paper about someone named Lester G. Suggins in Pschittwhole, Nebraska, who has sided his barn using ten thousand flattened Budweiser cans. In addition to the barn, the accompanying photo usually shows Lester, grinning happily and holding what will soon become  part of the casing for the hatch to the upper hayloft. Obviously drinking more beer will help to protect the infrastructure of one’s estate.

Thanks to the internet, many an urban legend about the value of pop tops has been widely circulated. Over the years, thousands, even millions of school children, cub scouts and lushes have been induced to save these small pieces of packaging in order to provide heart/lung machines, dialysis, wheelchairs, artificial hearts and kidney transplants for long suffering patients. Funny, but when my doctor’s bills are received, I’m always instructed to pay in US legal

tender and not in pop tops.

Beer cans created an immediate need for their own adjunct, hence the invention of the “church key” to enable thirsty consumers to more efficiently open their chilled cans  of Pabst Blue Ribbon. PBR cans originally had printed instructions on the side to inform users how to apply the church key to the can in order to release the beer. It is unknown if anyone actually ever read the instructions, since the skill required to open a can using a church key is about as technical as how to turn an electric light off and on by means of a switch. As usual the church key, which is

fast disappearing because of the pop top revolution, had other uses such as picking old grout out of ceramic tiles and arming 1950’s street gangs. Before the advent of the Crips, Bloods, and AK47s, the church key was an important part of the arsenal of many a Jet or Shark!

Thanks to the influence of the British beer engine and it’s long handled hand pump, most American draught beers are also dispensed by means of long , elaborate, theme oriented tap handles. But it wasn’t too long ago that the gears of a ’49 Olds or ’52 Nash were shifted by a small round Schlitz or Schaefer tap knob, screwed onto the shift lever in place of the boring, stock  plastic. The closest thing to drinking and driving that’s legal!

A trip to the Philadelphia Zoo will reveal the polar bears happily playing with bobbing beer kegs. I guess the kegs are empty, due to their buoyancy, but I really don’t know if the kegs of Ortlieb’s are provided that way, or the bears’ playful state is attributable to the kegs being delivered while full!

Several years ago I had a tremendous pain in my left foot, which was eventually diagnosed as Plantar’s Fascitis. A sinking feeling arose in the pit of my stomach when the examining physician questioned if I drank beer. Surely, I despaired, he’s going to tell me to stop drinking beer and I began to weigh which was the greater pain, the foot or the prospect of a beerless life. Imagine my joy and relief when he advised me to roll an empty beer bottle under my foot

while watching TV in order to relieve the condition!. What a great doctor. And what a great adjunct use of beer packaging! 

Also along medical lines, foam scrapers, no longer used for sanitary reasons and because the oceans of Coor’s Light that are served today don’t require them, played an important part in saving many lives. The cry of “Is there a doctor in the house?” summoned many a medical man to the emergency. The doctor, oblivious to possible

malpractice claims and finding he had left his medical bag at home, often requested a foam scraper to be used in place of a tongue depressor. Was the life saved because the patient didn’t swallow his own tongue or because the droplets of Guiness left on the scraper stimulated his recovery?

According to leading beer writer a hundred beer caps, nailed one by one onto a board make an excellent tool for scraping dog poop from one’s shoes. This device is certainly more efficient than a stick or a curbstone, but since it can really be used only once, it’s somewhat labor intensive. 

There is available on the internet a little booklet entitled “101 Uses for Beer Coasters” so I’ll not duplicate them here. Suffice to say I’m writing at a desk which is nicely balanced by four Rheingold coasters under the left rear leg.

These have been a few of the more popular uses of marketing adjuncts. If  anyone has any more we’d all

like to hear about them  

Cheers!

Dan 

My Love Affair With Beer  

by Dan Hodge

I've had a love affair with  beer for all of my adult life and even back to my kidhood when, as a lad of eight or nine I would read about Robin Hood and his Merry Men quaffing "goatskins of good October brewing" and Rip Van Winkle succumbing to the grip of "humming ale". While a boy of that age has no business actually drinking the stuff, I do recall on many occasions begging my father ( who, after the Hensler Brewery closed in 1957, subsequently became fondly known as "Iron City Bob") for a "sip", and even at that tender age began to notice differences in various brews, especially those that came home after 8:00 PM or on Sunday when the liquor stores were closed. These beers were of the draught variety and were poured from cardboard containers dispensed at the local taproom. The "sips" were small but served to whet my appetite for what was to come: the aforementioned life long love affair.

In the past forty years or so I've sampled hundreds, possibly even thousands or more beers, collected beer memorabilia of all kinds, read thousands of pages on the subject, written many  reviews, lectured about it, visited

brewpubs all over the country, dabbled in making it and even induced the officers of my string band to do "Rhapsody in Brew" as our theme in the 2001 Philadelphia Mummers Parade.

One thing I've never tried is writing about it, so when I was asked if I'd like to do something for the Beer Nexus ,I thought "Why not?" I've got fifty years of reminiscences about it, so maybe I can share a few of these with others.

One which stands out in my memory is the time a case of Hudepohl saved my sergeant's stripes and therefore

presents us with still another example of how the malt beverage benefits mankind. In the spring of 1970, I and fifty other members of the Quantico Marine Band embarked on a two week parade and concert tour to boost publicity and recruitment for the United States Marine Corps. Due to the length of the trip we traveled by Greyhound instead of our usual USMC bus and thus we were able to stop, once safely off the base, to stock up with sufficient quantities of brew to see us through to our first destination: Louisville, Kentucky. ( Not only is beer on a USMC bus verboten, while the Greyhound company had no problem with it, but in addition, the Greyhound had a restroom into which we eventually transferred all the cases of Schlitz we had brought aboard.)

Upon our arrival in Louisville we did a parade and a concert after which we repaired to the hotel bar to have a

beer and do a little "jamming", to the delight of the other patrons, one of whom was the president of the Falls City

Brewery and who, as a token of his appreciation, presented each bandsman with a case of his tasty product. Who says there is no God?. By the time we reached North Vernon, Indiana (a town famous for nothing save being the birthplace of President Nixon's mother), the Falls City was ,alas, gone. On a beautiful Sunday evening we played our concert and while the last notes of "Semper Fidelis" and "The Marine's Hymn" were still echoing in the high school gym, we set out on our eternal quest to find the local watering hole. 

Only then did the grim realization that Indiana was as dry as a bone on Sunday set in. No amount of begging, cajoling, bribery, or threats was enough to procure us a brew. Miserably we sat, still dressed in our dress blues, on benches and watched pick-ups and custom "rods" circle endlessly around the town square. Finally one driver pulled to the curb to find out why we were there. When we asked him if there were any place to get some beer he replied "Sure!   Ohio!  Hop in". Quickly passing a hat, we soon amassed enough money to slake our thirst as well as buy some gas for our new found savior. I and another guy took off with him and returned a couple of hours later with ten cases of Pabst Blue Ribbon and an equal amount of Hudepohl. Neither of us had previously heard of this flavor but it sounded good and the price was right.

As the beer was being unloaded into our motel room, the Band Officer, a captain who also had become painfully

aware of Indiana's Sunday prohibition, wandered by to check on things and noticed that our blues jackets were

unbuttoned, revealing about a square foot of our T-shirts, which are the only clothing worn under the "Blues blouse". His first reaction was to utter the dreaded words "See me when we get back to the barracks!". The crime of a Marine appearing in public with his blues blouse undone is tantamount  to remaining seated and laughing hysterically during The Marine's Hymn.....a definite no-no!. Those words meant at best a week of "chipping wax" and at worst a reduction in rank, depending upon the whim of the accusing officer. After our great success in procuring the goods necessary to make our day complete, we were devastated to learn of the possible cost, but being resourceful marines, we quickly found the obvious solution.

As the captain was making his mental notes vis a vis our lapse in proper dress and our envious supply of suds, we

asked if perhaps he would like a case for his own personal use in his quarters. He considered this proposal for about

three quarters of a second before he decided to cheerfully accept the offered case of Hudepohl and disappeared

behind his motel room door. Seconds later, before we could even pop the first top, he reappeared said "Forget

about seeing me back at Quantico, just keep your blouses buttoned from here on. Semper Fi!" And thus was I able to end my hitch with sergeant's chevrons securely in place.! Hudepohl and Bribery....perfect together! 

Twenty Memorable Beers    by   DAN HODGE

Frequently, when discussing beer with someone who is not into the subject as much as him, a beer connoisseur is asked the question, “What is your favorite beer?”. Of course, any beer geek who has drunk thousands of beers, brewed them, read about them and devoted his life to appreciating them for purposes other than getting drunk, knows that this is a question that’s impossible to answer: too many choices, places and reasons for which to quaff a brew to determine a favorite. However, in the minds of serious beer men, certain beers can be classified as “memorable”, not only because they are good, but also because of the location, occasion or other variable which causes them to be set apart from everyday, mundane brews which are drunk just because somebody asks, “Do you want a beer?’. That being said I thought back over my 56 years of serious beer loving and have come up with twenty memorable brews, covering the range from great taste, to ambiance, and other reasons why I remembered them. The twenty are:

1. Absolutely the most memorable on the list is the sixtel of Manchester Star Best Bitter, the only one ever imported into the US and served cask conditioned on hand pump at my local, the Gaslight, about 15 years ago. My opinion of being great was evidently shared by more than a few others as the sixtel sold out in less than a half hour.

2. Number two on the list has to be a rather run of the mill American lager, Pabst Blue Ribbon. But in this case the ambiance of the pinting session was the reason. After nine weeks of Marine Corps boot camp at Parris Island and not having had so much as a cup of coffee as an intoxicant during that period, the cooler full of PBR my father had packed was a wonderful reprieve from those nine weeks of hell. Sitting at a picnic table on Graduation Day under trees dripping with Spanish moss, drinking PBR and savoring my mother’s picnic lunch made DIs, PT, and sand fleas seem very far away.

3. A great teen age memory was traveling to Staten Island and downing seven ounce PBRs without having to worry about not being twenty one.

4. PBR was also my first fully legal beer, enjoyed in the Sportsman’s Tavern in Quantico, Virginia after my assignment to the Quantico Marine Band. Sipping a few cold ones while watching the Senator’s game on TV, put me completely at ease , a feeling I had not been able to experience since I started visiting the Sportsman six months prior to my twenty first birthday and always wondering when the proprietor or an MP would suddenly ask to see my ID card.

5. Combining great taste with location makes me fondly recall the Ruddles County Best Bitter I had for my first ever cask conditioned brew in London during my honeymoon.

6. On that same trip we stopped in Colchester to visit a distant relative of my wife and wound up the evening sitting by the fire in a tiny pub drinking Flowers Best Bitter from a large gravity fed cask while watching snow pelt against the windows. The ambiance surrounding this brew made it particularly memorable.

7. As long as we’re on the subject of best bitter, the trip also included several days in Yorkshire and a few stops at the Hayne’s Arms in Northallerton and downing many pints of Worthington’s Best Bitter, served after hours by a truly gracious host, Geoffrey Worthington Hart. (No relation to the beer). Memorable indeed!

The next four memorable brews all involve one of the country’s formerly biggest brewers, P. Ballantine and Sons, of Newark.

8. Ice filled barrels of Ballantine Beer, Ballantine Bock and Ballantine XXX Ale were an excellent way to quench eighteen year old thirst on the whistle stop train ride for the senatorial campaign of Warren Wilentz for which my Mummer’s band supplied the music. That nobody seemed to care (just imagine that nowadays) about our underage status made these beers stand distinctively apart from other ways of obtaining brews at age eighteen.( fake IDs, trips to Staten Island and bribing elderly winos to buy them for us).

9. When the brewmaster of Pabst, which acquired the rights to the Ballantine label after the brewery closed, decided to bring back the iconic Ballantine IPA and the Gaslight was to be one of the first pubs to pour the beer, I was devastated to learn that initial tapping would occur while I was away on vacation, but overjoyed when I heard from Gaslight brewer, DJ, that he had miraculously “found” another keg in the basement which was freshly on tap. What a memorable way to end a vacation.

10. Every beer fan knows about Ballantine Burton Ale, brewed only twice and stored in huge wooden vats to be given away as Christmas presents to dignitaries, employees and friends of the brewery: the “Holy Grail” of beers. Particularly memorable was the bottle of Burton Ale my beer club obtained fifty years after bottling (see Vince Capano’s article “ You Paid $100 for a bottle of $%$$#@$& Beer”) and had a celebratory tasting at my house. Tasted like hell, but memorable indeed!

11. Better than the above was the revival of Burton Ale by Pabst brewer, Greg Duuhs. When I discovered it on tap at the Liberty Tavern for only $6/pint, it became a very important inclusion in my beer memories.

12. Finishing a parade in Tamaqua, Pa. on a miserably hot, sticky day with my Mummer’s band, we were invited back to firehouse of our sponsor, where kegs of Vitamin Y (Yuengling Premium) were available. Drinking the “Ying Yangs”, as the firemen called ,them was a memory that will last forever.

13. Also after completing a parade in Mannheim, Pa. , this time with the Marine Band, we were billeted, four at a time in private homes. Sitting for what seemed like eons in the living room of a lovely family made me and my three bandmates wonder if this guy would EVER ask if we’d like a beer. Finally, at long last, he asked if we’d like to accompany him to his “club” (Pennsylvania being dry on Sundays at the time). No beer was ever so tasty and thirst quenching as the Old Readings pouring from the club’s taps.

14. My intro to dark beer game about when visiting a beer distributor in York, Pa. with my grandfather. We spied cases of Kaier’s Beer on sale for $5.99/case. We quickly picked on up and toted it home only to discover a sticker on the side of the case that said “porter brewed”. At that time neither of us had much interest in anything that wasn’t plain old Pennsylvania lager, but we managed to put quite a dent in the case, creating my first memory of dark beer.

15. Certainly a very memorable beer was the one I and my friend and next door neighbor had after visiting the Alementary Brewery in Hackensack. We purchased a couple of six packs to bring home with the intention of splitting them up so we each could have a few of each style. While attempting to separate the cans, Matt mistakenly punched a hole in the side of one, causing the beer to come spewing out. Rather than waste it, the two of us idiots took turns swilling the spouting suds in my driveway on a frigid February evening. A great, if somewhat questionable beer memory.

16. On my 70th birthday my wife presented me with a kegerator, enabling me to keg my home-brews and saving me many hours of bottle washing, sanitizing, etc. Not actually knowing much about the kegging process, I was happily surprised with the results of my first effort. The IPA stands out as a great first time draught beer.

17. After snowstorm delays and the resulting almost twenty hour trip to Munich, I can still savor the taste of the Hofbrau Dunkel on my first trip to the Hofbrauhaus.

18. A very memorable beer was the fresh Pilsner Urquell poured from a large wooden cask in the caverns below the Pilsner Urquell brewery, made better by the fact that my wife, who doesn’t drink beer, gave her samples to me.

19. Attending a Norfolk Tides AAA baseball game with my son, compliments of his company, complete with admission to their luxury boxes, afforded great views of the game, a wonderful and varied menu of food and seemingly bottomless kegs of Straub Beer on tap. As luck would have it, that night was part of the promotion introducing that great western Pennsylvania beer to the Tidewater area.

20. Not all beer memories are good, and there are many of those. However, nothing could even begin to compare to the bad memory evoked by a visit to what shall remain a nameless local microbrewery. The beers tried on the first visit were terrible, those on the second, horrible, and being crazy enough to give them a third try, found the beers nauseating. No thanks for the memories here!

 But thanks for all the GOOD memories and 

Cheers, 

Dan

 Beer Inanities:

Myths, Misconceptions, Misinformation  and General Stupidity about Beer

Since the birth of the microbrew revolution beer has been steadily achieving rightful recognition as a beverage worthy of the same homage paid to wine. Craft brewers, with their seasonal offerings and resurrected styles, have created an awareness that beer is much more than Bud, Miller and Coors, even among those who don’t share our love of the beverage. Food and drink sections in newspapers, regional

magazines and even the electronic media frequently feature articles on pairing food and beer and styles of beer to match a particular occasion.

But all the positive press about beer also results in excellent examples of the old adage “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing”. Some people read the occasional piece about beer and immediately fancy themselves mavens on the subject, passing along misinformation and perpetuating myths.

One of the biggest beer myths, and one which never seems to go away, is the misconception that breweries clean their equipment in the spring and, using the residue left from the cleaning process and the previous year’s brewing, create bock beer. One man I met at a party INSISTED that this is true, supported by the information that his brother-in-law’s neighbor’s father, who had worked a summer job at Ballantine’s in the early sixties, told him so. He even informed me that it was called “buck” beer (he didn’t even get the name right) and that it sold for a dollar a case because of the lower cost of the ingredients. Would this then indicate that doppelbock (double bock in English) meant the mash tuns were cleaned twice and that the resulting brew sold for two dollars a case? Most bock beers are actually brewed in the fall and lagered for several months untill spring, when this fuller bodied “liquid bread” sustained monks during their Lenten fasts. Since they made it themselves, they didn’t even have to pony up a dollar a case.

Many folks who are out of the beer loop observe a pint of Guinness and remark “I could never drink something like that. It’s too heavy and too strong”, furthering the myth that dark beer is stronger than light beer. This fallacy is fairly easy to dispel by means of a drinking contest. The logistics are simple: a dozen pints of draught Guinness for the knowledgeable beerfan and maybe four bottles of Baltika Extra Nine or Victory Golden Monkey for the believer that darker is stronger. At the sound of the gun start downing the

beers and see who hits the deck first. Light wins every time!

A similar delusion is that “ale” is stronger than “beer” (with no acknowledgement that ale IS beer), an idea continued by ignorant lawmakers in some states that require malt beverages above a certain alcohol level to be labeled as “ale”, apparently without a clue that the difference between ales and lagers has nothing whatsoever to do with the alcoholic content of either. Another testimony to the stupidity of some of those who call themselves our leaders.

Not long ago I attended a dinner at which the usual insipid bottles of Bud and Coor’s Light were all that was offered. Never being one to let my feelings go unannounced, I remarked to a co-worker that I wished real beer were available. She responded by asking what beer I liked best. Obviously hard to answer, this was a question akin to asking a democrat politician what kind of voter he’d rather pander to. Far too many choices. But without thinking, I replied with the statement “maybe a Guinness” which she immediately corrected by informing me that Guinness isn’t beer, it’s stout. I tried to explain that stout is merely a style of beer, but she

shot me down with the indefensible argument that she should know because she was of Irish extraction and

Guinness has it’s roots in Dublin. Sure….and being partly English I’m practically on a first name basis with Prince Charles. “Hey Charlie, what say we knock back a few pints at the George and Dragon this weekend?”

The subject of stout reminds me of last March when, seated at the bar of a pub in Massachusetts , I witnessed a thirsty fellow who, apparently after reading somewhere that Guinness is an appropriate drink for St. Patrick’s Day, ordered one. Only he pronounced it “Gweeness”, positive proof of his beer expertise.

California Common is a style of beer most often enjoyed by homebrewers trying to duplicate Anchor Steam beer of San Francisco , to my knowledge the only commercial brewery still making the stuff. Displaying no knowledge of the style or brewing process, a man once explained to me that he’d never try Anchor Steam because he didn’t like “hot” beer.

Ignorance can sometimes best be demonstrated by the printed word, since the ‘hard copies” can be saved for posterity. Reviews of the Gaslight Brewery on Pubcrawler.com afford two perfect examples of this. One disgruntled person, posting his displeasure after a visit that found eight house brews and four guest beers on tap, a cask conditioned ale on hand pump and at least twenty five bottled varieties available, rated the Beer selection as “so so”. The Gaslight doesn’t sell Anheuser Busch products but maybe if they had

offered Michelob Ultra Light his review would have been upgraded to “average”. Another person with a grudge to bear stated with emphasis that the reason he rated the Gaslight beers of poor quality was because they were “obviously brewed with yeast”.  Duh….I guess the reason I didn’t like last night’s spaghetti was because it was “obviously made with pasta”.

Stupid questions are not to be ignored in this discussion of beer inanities. When I tell people I’m a homebrewer some people respond with the query “Does it taste any good?”, to which I usually give the sarcastic response “No! I spend thirty or forty dollars on ingredients, three or four hours brewing and cleaning equipment (maybe if I only cleaned once a year I could make buck beer and lower my initial cost) and another hour or so bottling the fruits of my labors because I’m attempting to make something that tastes like hell and that nobody would want to drink.” The proprietor of the Gaslight informs me that he has been asked this question hundreds of times by patrons who are oblivious to the fact that they have entered a brewpub.

In beer discussions over the years several people have told me about Ballantine’s “Indian” ale, evidently a reference to the great but no longer brewed Ballantine IPA or India Pale Ale. The Paper City Brewery of Holyoke, Massachusetts helps to perpetuate this misnomer by calling their IPA “Indian Pale Ale” which features a picture of an old Indian motorcycle on the label.

The biggest beer myth of all is one promoted by the temperance crowd which decries beer as being bad for you, when in fact most studies concur that beer in moderation, especially darker beers, is good for you. So, I think I’ll do my constitution some good and go have a beer.

Cheers, 

Dan

 IN HEAVEN THERE IS NO BEER!

by Dan  Hodge

The joys of drinking beer are many and varied, from quenching one’s thirst with a frosted mug of “lawn- mower beer”, to relaxing by the fire with a glass of old ale, to pouring from pitchers of draught while

playing shuffleboard in the local tavern. For pure enjoyment, a glass of beer is unsurpassed as a way to put aside the cares of the day and needs nothing in addition to complete the experience, though the

pleasure is often enhanced by the addition of a good meal or just a handful of peanuts or bag of pretzels.

But not everything to broaden the drinking experience needs to be ingested. Beer and music go together

very well indeed, and as varied as are the styles of beer, so are the types of music that pair with those

styles.

Country music has been the best example of how beer relates to music. Cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon or

Schlitz just seem to fit so well with the sounds emanating from Southern jukeboxes. They probably

don’t serve too many matinis, olive, straight up in Luckenbach, Texas. The glass in Webb Pierce’s “There

Stands the Glass” (…it’s my first one today) more likely contained Dixie Lager than Remy Martin, and

Johnny Cash reminds us that it doesn’t necessarily have to be twelve o’clock somewhere in order to enjoy

a brew. The beer he had for breakfast wasn’t bad so he had one more for dessert, as explained in “Sunday

Morning Coming Down”. That country star Hank Thompson was the best example of the relationship

between country music and beer is best demonstrated by the titles of his hits:

1. “On Tap, In the Can, or In the Bottle

2.  I’ve got time for one for the road and a “Six Pack To Go”

3. “What Made Milwaukee Famous “ (has made a loser out of me)

4 “Bubbles in my Beer”

5. “Oklahoma Home Brew”

6. “A Broken Heart and a Glass of Beer”

And my own particular favorite: ( there’s no place that I’d rather be than right here with my “Red Neck,

White Socks and Blue Ribbon Beer”

In the seventies, Tom T. Hall explained why beer and country music are such a perfect match with his great

tune, “I Like Beer”. (Whiskey’s too rough, champagne costs too much, and vodka puts my mouth in gear….

so let me explain, with this simple refrain, as a matter of fact I like beer)

But country isn’t the only music that pairs well with suds. Nothing makes a pitcher of beer go down smoother than listening to Stella Kowalski and her Polka Five banging out “The Beer Barrel Polka” in the

back room of an American Legion hall, or pounding the tables to the Polkaholics frenzied rendition of “In

Heaven There is no Beer”

Although most devotees of classical music would more likely be wine snobs, even in this genre beer raises it’s beautiful head. I never tire of watching Edmund Purdom mouth the unbelievable tenor of Mario Lanza

singing “Drink, Drink, Drink”, while hoisting a liter stein in the movie version of Sigmund Romberg’s, “The Student Prince”. And , yes, it’s tough to view that scene without such a stein in one’s hand! My

favorite foray into the world of classical music and beer occurs every Christmas eve, when the rest of the

family has retired after returning from Midnight Mass. I sit by the tree and slowly sip Anchor’s Special Ale

while listening to The Nutcracker Suite. For that half hour , life seems perfect!

Songs of brew even extend to children. Of course they can’t drink it, but how many kids have not

returned from a class trip singing “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” in the back of the bus?( Today that

would be politically incorrect and the kids would have to submit to counseling before returning to class)

As quickly as the Irish lapse into poetry and break into fights over pints of Guiness, so do the Germans

break into song over steins of Oktoberfest. There are literally thousands of German drinking songs that are

incomplete without the hoisting of schteins in addition to the oompahs.

American breweries have relied heavily on music to promote their product. “Hey! Getcha cold beer”,

“Schaefer is the one beer to have when you’re having more than one”, “The Trommer Polka, and “Ah! Ah!

Sittin’ pretty….All together in Schaefer city” are a few examples of jingles that have become standards in

brewery advertising history. In some cases the jingles are better known than their origins. How many people

other than Gaslight patrons Augie Helms and Jack Sweeney and Sigmund Spaeth, the “tune detective” ,

know that “Rheingold is my beer the dry beer”, is actually Emile Waldteufel’s classical waltz “L’Estudiantina”, which always sounds better when accompanied by a glass or two of Rheingold.

For over forty years I’ve been a musician in the Aqua String Band of the Philadelphia Mummers, wearers of

sequins and ostrich plumes and makers of great banjo playing, beer drinking music. When asked by

people over the years where the name “Aqua” came from, I relate the truth: In 1919, when the band was

organized on the eve of prohibition, the founders had no beer with which to toast themselves, (Yeah…….

sure) only water, hence “Aqua”. Over the past 87 years the has always traveled to all of it’s gigs with generous quantities of brew packed into the bottom of the bus along with the instruments and backpieces.

Currently , Yuengling’s is the musical staff of life, but in the past prodigious quantities of Ortlieb’s, Pabst,

and Miller were loaded as fuel for as many as five consecutive parades on the Fourth of July. For a while

in the seventies we were sponsored by Schmidt’s of Philadelphia in many parades which featured a Schmidt’ s beer wagon at the end , offering commemorative glasses with unlimited refills of the” Eeeaasy Beer”. It required a tremendous effort to induce the bandsman to board the bus for the ride home. The fresh draught from the beer wagon tasted so mush better than the traveled cans on the bus.

The band’s journey to Germany’s Fasching celebration is a whole beer story in itself, but one anecdote can

be related here as an illustration of the close relationship between the musical mummers and the malt beverage. When met by our tour bus in Luxembourg for our ten day trip through the Rhineland, we dis- covered that the trip’s organizer had been a little too enthusiastic in his preparations for the tour. Although we managed to cram in the instruments, there was no room for the luggage due to the forty cases of Bitburger that had been pre-ordered and loaded!  In heaven there is no beer!!! 

PBR Me, ASAP

Once in a while, all micro brew fans (ie. Beer Snobs), need a break from the endless discussion of style, IBUs, original gravity, color, type of serving glass and the many other points to be considered when searching for the perfect brew. Every now and then we need just a plain ,old, beer. That being considered, when I suggested to the Commander in Chief of my beer club, Draught Board 15, that we might dedicate a meeting to the country's fourth largest marketer of malt beverages, he readily agreed. 

Our meeting was scheduled to be a tasting of the products of the Pabst Brewing Company, which, interestingly enough, no longer owns a brewery, all of its beers being contract brewed. Pabst Blue Ribbon has always been a sentimental favorite of mine since I was eighteen, when I magically became of age. halfway across the Outerbridge Crossing, on the way to the wilds of Staten Island.  There  we would go to a little shot and beer joint with a glass fronted refrigerator behind the bar which contained rows of PBR in tall neck bottles, arrayed like soldiers on dress parade. 

Being partial to John Philip Sousa, the Fourth of July and patriotism in general, the red, white, and blue labels caught my attention, and I became a dedicated Pabst drinker, until I discovered Yuengling years later.at Pauly';s Tavern, on South Orange Avenue in Newark, NJ, almost in the shadow of the Big Bottle landmark.  Pauly's  provided fresh steins of Pabst which were a delight every modern day microbrew fan should have been able to experience. The beautiful color, frothy head and ever so slight sour aroma made for one of the best American lagers ever brewed. 

The closing of the brewery in Newark marked the end of my Pabst allegiance and probably close to twenty years passed before I tried another. However, the new ownership of Pabst had hit upon a novel marketing ploy which has now rocketed the company back to number four in sales. During the twenty years of my Pabst Drought they had been busily buying and selling breweries, acquiring rights and brand names of former national and regional brewers, and instituting the idea of retro beers to market their products. Former giants Schlitz, Stroh's, Ballantine, and Schaefer are all brewed by Pabst, and their portfolio includes formerly famous regionals such as Old Style, National Bohemian, Piel';s and Carling. They are even the purveyor's of Mc Sorley's Ales, widely known as the only brews served at Mc Sorley's Old Ale House in New York City.

I volunteered to do the procuring for the meeting and set out on a Friday night to see how many Pabst products I could find in two hours. The ;mass market beer aisle at my regular store presented a vista of floor to ceiling stacks of Budweiser, Coors and the other usual suspects in the headache and hangover line. I usually avoid this section, so it took a few moments before I began to notice the ;cheapies, stashed away to the rear. Virtually all of these retro beers are available only in cans, and then usually in only in 12 packs, cases, and thirty packs. Even though this meant buying significantly more beer than necessary for the tasting, it was not an economic disaster because a case of Piel';s, for example costs far less than a for or six pack of some of the top of the line seasonal craft brews. A thirty pack of Stroh's was offered for $11.99. I suspect that if the average American drove a fork lift, some of these beers would sold by the pallet!

 I picked up twelve packs of Piel's, Carling Black Label, and six packs of Old Milwaukee and Ballantine Ale. My next stop unearthed Schaefer and Schmidt. After this, the real fun began as I ventured into Irvington in search of such classics as Colt .45 and St. Ide's malt liquors, which are also brewed by Pabst. At this point the thirty pack marketing strategy was not a problem, as these stratospheric gravity beers are sold by the individual 24 oz. can and 40 oz. plastic bottle. I rounded up one or two and moved on as I still hadn't located PBR. This was going to be harder than I thought! 

I stopped at a small corner store where a man named Harshad, speaking from behind bullet proof glass, informed me that he had never heard of this beer, but was able to offer me a couple of 24 oz. cans of 9.6% ABV Pabst brewed malt liquors at the bargain basement price of 99 cents a can. Since both the alcohol and liquid contents are nearly twice that of the average beer, one can easily obtain a bigger bang for the buck by purchasing these "malternatives". I call them malternatives because they DO include miniscule amounts of malt and also because they are an alternative to sniffing aerosol cans of spray paint. 

A couple of more stops finally located Blue Ribbon and Schaefer, and the only bottled variety I found, Mc Sorley's. I returned home in under two hours and happy in the knowledge that I had obtained the equivalent of almost four and a half cases for under fifty dollars. All of these beers should be served much colder than craft brews, so they were delivered to our meeting at the Gaslight Restaurant a day before the meeting and packed away under a lot of ice. Artificial refrigeration just doesn';t cut it for these beers. Only ice will do! 

At the meeting, each group at a table was provided with samples of each and left to it's own devices as to how to organize the tasting. As the beer began to flow, the Beer that Made Milwaukee Famous ;What'll ya Have?,Old Time Flavor, Hey Mabel!...Black Label!, and Make the Three Ring Sign - Ask the man for Ballantine, came roaring out of my memory. 

When the Piel's was tasted I recalled TV ads of thirty years ago featuring Jimmy Breslin advising us that "Piel's is a good drinking ;beah". Thirty years later I'm still wondering what uses Piel's had besides drinking. Polishing silverware? Flushing out drains? Also what exactly is "beah"? A new style, or just Breslin's New York City attempt at saying beer? 

With all due respects to Schaefer, ALL of theses brews are the ;one beer to have when you're having more than one,  All, which are mighty similar, were served in the usual three or four ounce tasting glass, which really doesn't do them justice. A frosted stein or 16oz. picnic cup is the only answer. The malt liquors, which, with the exception of Colt .45, were unspeakable , were unfairly treated as well. A fuller appreciation of these brews requires them to be consumed directly out of the can, disguised in a brown paper bag, while standing on a street corner. In fact , the owner of the store where I bought it who knows his clientele and their tastes, offered me just such a bag at the time of purchase.  After some thought, I declined  

In all seriousness, the meeting's popular favorites were Pabst Blue Ribbon and Old Milwaukee. The undrinkable were the malt liquors. Piel's was deemed watery and Schmidt's (the former North Central, USA version, not Schmidt's of Philadelphia) was described as harsh to the taste. As would be expected by a bunch of craft brew enthusiasts, Ballantine Ale and McSorley's were determined to be closest to our thing. 

While this venture into the world of retro beers was appreciated by all members present a couple of Gaslight pints welcomed many of us back into the real world. Of course there's no comparison, but when the days grow long, the air grows steamy and the lawnmower gets noisy, I have no problem with crying out PBR ME ASAP!!

Iron City Bob

Not too long ago the deaths of Carrie Fisher and her mother, Debbie Reynolds, reminded me that in my large collection of 1950’s and ’60’s LPs were some of their respective father’s and ex-husband’s recordings. I put them on the turntable, grabbed a brew , Great Lakes Turntable Pils, and sat back to enjoy his rich, resonant tenor. And what a voice he had! No wonder he was the biggest recording star of the early fifties. “If I Ever Needed You”, “Anytime”, and “Lady of Spain” echoed throughout the house as I sipped my brew, listening happily and wondering what in hell ever happened to melodic pop music. One of his biggest hits, “Oh My Papa”, recorded in 1954, brought to mind my own father, the greatest man I have ever known.

My old man never achieved fame, a large financial portfolio, or any of the other measures by which modern society defines success. He didn’t finish high school but was never without a book or crossword puzzle in his hand. He was self educated and knew more “stuff” than anybody I ever knew. But even that is relatively unimportant in the grand scheme of things. A wise man once said “It matters not how much money or fame one has achieved. A man will best be remembered by whether or not he made a difference in the life of a child”.

Pop sired six of us between 1948 and 1960 and certainly made a difference in our lives. His refinement, grooming, work ethic, responsibility, patriotism and love of his children were passed on to all of us. No doubt my five siblings have their own particular ideas of how Pop impressed them, but what molded me the most were his loves of New Jersey, baseball and beer. I couldn’t live anywhere but the Garden State, and starting in late October I actually start counting down the days until Mets spring training opens. My passion for all things beer related speaks for itself.

I owe that love to my father. From the time I was old enough to remember anything, I recall him coming home from work (as an insurance man, he always worked evenings) with some brew. He would sit at the kitchen table and have a few with cheese and crackers. In the early days it was invariably Hensler’s beer, brewed, of course, in Newark, and on special occasions Ballantine XXX ale, also brewed in Newark, appeared on the table. The darkest year in Pop’s life must have been 1957, which saw both the closing of Hensler’s brewery and the defection of his beloved New York Giants and Willie Mays to San Francisco. For the next few years Krueger’s, brewed  of course in Newark, was his brand until that brewery closed in 1960.  Until the Mets (sponsored by Rheingold, brewed in Orange)were launched in 1962, his only venue for baseball was the hated Yankees, but they were sponsored on TV by Ballantine, so at least he could listen to Mel Allen yelling about a “Ballantine Blast”.

At some point in the late fifties Pop started a beer opener collection. These were generally passed out free of charge by retailers who had been given a supply by distributors as an advertising ploy: you can’t drink a beer without opening it and what better way to open a bottle of Knickerbocker than with a Knickerbocker beer bottle opener. He amassed scores of these things and I well remember him sitting at his desk/workbench in the cellar sorting and polishing them, always with a frothy stein close at hand. The collection was passed on to me and thanks to Pop’s influence, has been enhanced to over 400 and grows each time I visit a brewery, beer fest, antique store or garage sale.

From Pop I learned to NEVER drink a beer from it’s original container. At least I never saw him do so. Again, thanks to Pop, over 400 beer glasses of various types take up space in my house and I always think of him when filling one up.

Having six kids under the age of twelve and a stay-at- home mom, we were the typical 1950’s family: split level home in the suburbs, Ford station wagon in the driveway and generally a larger version of “Leave it to Beaver”. Of course Ward Cleaver would never even THINK of drinking a beer, so in that aspect of 1950’s life we somewhat differed. The other difference was six kids as opposed to two. The larger number demanded a limit on how much household income could be afforded for suds. But in the early 1960’s Pittsburgh Brewing Company infiltrated the metropolitan area with Iron City Beer and it’s three quarts for a dollar marketing strategy. Pop took immediate advantage of this tremendous money saving opportunity, even though it wasn’t brewed in New Jersey.  His devotion to Iron City was enhanced by the fact that they sponsored the Pirates, and instead of listening to Mel Allen’s “Ballantine Blasts” he heard Bob Prince’s “Pour on the Iron” when Bill Mazeroski put the final nail in the despised Yankee’s coffin and ended the 1960 World Series.

After my brothers and I became involved in a mummer’s band, Pop, who couldn’t play anything, joined as quartermaster, taking care of equipment, costumes, instruments and icing down the post-parade brew. I don’t recall exactly who it was, but someone in the band, knowing of his preference for IC, coined the nickname “Iron City Bob”, and thus he was known even though Pabst Blue Ribbon, of course brewed in Newark, later became his beer of choice. (“Pabst Bob” doesn’t quite have the same ring, and nobody ever thought of “Blue Ribbon Bob”.

But back to Iron City. Beer and baseball have always fit well together. There’s nothing like a cool draught during the 7th inning stretch (or 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, or 6th innings as well). Sorry no 8th or 9th inning brews, due to the stupidity of those who rule major league baseball. But today, too many nouveau, “designer” beers flood the market. Who wants to watch baseball with a footed pilsner of gueze in hand? Or a cooler full of mentholated porter? No thank you!  Iron City was and is the perfect style for the National Pastime, and I know that if he were still around, Iron City Bob would like nothing better to relax in the Garden State, watching the Mets with an IC close at hand.

And there’s never been anyone I’d rather share one and the Mets with!

                                                                        Cheers! 

Dan

I’ve previously written about “Beer Paradise”, or the Finger Lakes Region of Central New York, and, thanks to my wife’s urging ,have spent a few vacations there, renting cottages on Seneca Lake.

They were memorable times, with kids and grandchildren all enjoying a week or two, bobbing around in the lake and me enjoying the scores of breweries in the area. A week is plenty for me, but my wife desired

something more, and soon she was spending a few hours on the computer each day, looking for lakeside homes with the intent of possible purchase.

Sometimes, when one looked good, a trip would be made to inspect it in person, and those trips would unveil pluses and minuses of a particular property. Pluses such as only a mile or two from the nearest brewery and minuses such as 187 steps down rickety stairs to the water’s edge. (Not so bad, but what goes down eventually must come back up, and 187 steps down means 187 to climb on your way back. Other pluses were reasonably priced properties located at lake level (no steps) with the corresponding minus of requiring flood insurance , which seemed to cost as much as the house. All the inspection trips meant eating lunch  n the area in which we were looking, and a brewpub was always available to satisfy hunger and quench thirst.

Finally, my bride found a property on Oneida Lake, the “thumb” of the Finger Lakes. (Finger Lakes run north and south, Oneida runs east and west). The location was perfect, the price right, the house was in good shape, with city water, sewers and natural gas. All those pluses were enhanced by what I discovered after we closed: a seemingly unending list of brewpubs, breweries and beer bars in the immediate area.

On the day we took ownership we had a light lunch at the Hot House Brewery in Cicero, NY, which actually is a brewery situated in a greenhouse. This arrangement allows one to purchase all kinds of ferns, potted plants and flowers, along with brews having such eclectic names as Daylight in the Swamp Amber Ale, Grandma’s Sweater Pale Ale and Rattlesnake Gulch IPA. The brewery is only about a fifteen minute ride from our front door, so I envision another trip or two while at the lake.

Scouting the area on the weekend we moved in and driving through Canastota, NY, home of ex- middleweight champ, Carmen Basilio, and a boxing Hall of Fame, I slammed on the brakes when a sign above one of the storefronts identified it as the Erie Canal Brewing Company. Several visits have already been made to fill growlers and sample their excellent brews (the Irish Red is outstanding) and those offered under the Seneca Street label, their sister brewpub.

The Oneida Lake Brew Haus is another stop only fifteen minutes from home. Although they don’t make their own beer, this tavern always has thirty two rotating taps to choose from in the beautifully decorated pub. Our server explained that the taps frequently change, with some old standbys such as Utica Club always available, as are flights of anything you want to try.  According to her, Tap #32 is always a stout and

ordering is done by number, so dark beer lovers should keep the number 32 in mind, and for those who like their beer very cold, the Brew Haus sign sports a message claiming that “Our beer is colder than your ex’s heart”. They have a beautiful outdoor deck with a wonderful lake view, so a few summertime stops are eagerly anticipated.

Just a little past the Hot House Brewery is the Freight Yard Brewing Company which has decent beer in a very nice steampunk atmosphere, but which, in my opinion, gets a little too enthusiastic in their Covid

precautions. “Because of Covid”, it was explained to me why flights were not available at the time we visited and their beer is served in crummy solo cups. Apparently, according to Freight Yard, Covid is able to

distinguish between both the size and composition of the drinking vessel.

The best venue for enjoying a brew while at my new vacation home may well be the Lucky Dog Pizzeria and Taproom, a stark but spacious tavern less than half a mile walk from my front door. The fish and chips

and burger we had were inexpensive and very good and the chalkboard listed more than a dozen craft brews on tap, including such beers as Bell’s Christmas Ale and Kentucky Breakfast Stout.

A place I haven’t tried as yet is the White Water Tavern, about eight minutes away and which looks promising because of the Brooklyn Lager neon sign in the window. And, of course, Syracuse, home of the AAA Mets, and only a twenty minute drive away, is home to more thantwenty breweries and brewpubs just waiting to get checked out by yours truly.

Some folks say a definite plus when buying a home is a plumber next door. I say substitute brewery for plumber.

                                                            Cheers!

                                                    Dan 

Eleven Weeks of Beer Hell  by Dan Hodge

Eleven weeks of being “locked down” has begun to take its toll on me. Eleven weeks of no church, no work, no haircuts, no non-essential stores, no restaurants or bars, masks, and daily briefings by the elected tyrants who caused at least half of this mess by forcing nursing homes to accept Covid 19 patients, have all contributed to a feeling of Jimmy Carter like malaise. Everything that needed to be fixed around my house is fixed, everything that needed to be painted is painted, and everything that needed to be cleaned is cleaned. All cars have been detailed, furniture has been refinished, grass has been planted and shrubbery has been trimmed. Four batches of beer have been brewed. But all that notwithstanding, boredom has set in. No bands to play in, no baseball to watch and no taverns at which to enjoy a brew.

       Mercifully, liquor stores have remained open (ONE thing Murphy did right), and the above mentioned home-brews are kegged and ready to be tapped, so beer, or a lack of it is no problem. But any true beer lover desperately misses the ambiance of his favorite tavern, with its eclectic selection of tap handles, intelligent and witty conversation, and the feeling of belonging. Being a “regular” doesn’t just mean that a person spends all his time in a pub. It also means times when he can regularly be expected to make an appearance and become a temporary part of the atmosphere.  To be sure, a few craft beers on the deck after yard work are a welcome pleasure, but they pale by comparison to those served by a friendly bartender in a pub.

       Several incidents I have encountered during the pandemic relate to beer. After toiling all day in my son’s yard I thought it would be a splendid idea to stop at the Wet Ticket Brewery, only a few blocks away, and fill a growler with one of their excellent brews. That way, I could at least partake of a very small part of the local brewery experience. I walked in with my abominable mask and my empty jug only to be told by the girl behind the temporary table that she couldn’t fill it and I would have to buy one of theirs. When I asked why, she said mine might be contaminated with Covid. I replied that I was standing there and that I might be Covid positive, so what was the point? I guess in these times of lost revenue, it was only a ploy to sell me an unneeded growler, but I declined the offer and left. A week or two later, the same scenario was repeated at the Two Ton Brewery, also brewers of great beer, but beer that’s undrinkable unless you also buy one of their growlers. When sanity returns, both those places will be on my short list of places not to visit.

       Joe Canal’s liquor store, which includes a large growler filling station had no problem filling me up, nor did Climax Brewery, where owner, Dave Hoffman, even let me inside (no mask required) to taste a few of his brews while my growler was being filled. My own local, The Gaslight ,cheerfully fills any growler, so even though my favorite barstool has been vacant asses past three months, I can sit on the deck, emptying the growler, reminiscing about happy hours spent at the Gaslight and contemplating when I might be able to spend some more.

       The pandemic has inspired some brewers to coin appropriate names for their brews. The Wild Heaven Brewery of Georgia has offered “Fauci Spring Ale” and a canned brew called “Don’t Stand Close to Me”. Colorado’s Outer Range Brewery has brewed “I Miss Loud Taprooms” Double IPA, and the Ale Asylum of Wisconsin offers “Fuck Covid Pils” and “F*ck Covid 2 Hazy Pale Ale”. Closer to home, Flounder Brewing Company is featuring “Pandemic IPA”. “Corona” beer can speak for itself.

       Not to be outdone by all the commercial brewers, much like Al Capp with his character, “Joe Btfsplk”, I have decided to name my next keg to be tapped “Ibgwtsio” (I’ll be glad when this shit is over) Brown Ale. 

 It's The Water, Stupid

Equally important as malt, hops and yeast are in the brewing of beer is water, although there are those who suggest that water isn’t really an ingredient, but only a solution in which the chemical process of beer

making takes place. (According to those theorists, yeast isn’t an ingredient either, only the agent which causes the process to begin.)

But for our purposes we’ll consider water to be a vitally important ingredient and there are many reasons why this is so. Water from different locations produces different characteristics in beer styles which caused great brewing centers to arise and be noted for particular styles. For example, the low percentage of salts in the waters of Bavaria contribute to the softness of lager and the water from Burton-on-Trent in England is so suitable for the brewing of pale ale that the word "“Burton” has been used to promote that style of beer, most notably the legendary Ballantine Burton Ale.

Water containing calcium increases the extract from malt and hops during mashing and boiling, sulfates enhance hop bitterness and chlorides bring out the sweetness of particular beers. In addition to the heat, one of the reasons that the southern United States was never noted for having any kind of a sizeable brewing industry is that the waters of the Deep South are not conducive to the brewing of good beer.

Today, practically any water can be “adjusted” to create any kind of beer anywhere. In fact, at least one Caribbean brewery desalinates seawater  to brew its beer. Since all of the Caribbean lagers I’ve tried are uniformly nondescript and bland, I wouldn’t be surprised if they all do.

The lack of purity of some water was another reason for the development of great brewing regions when people discovered that the boiling of wort in the brewing process killed all sorts of microorganisms that previously had been killing them. Beer in medieval Europe was safe to drink, Water was not. Plymouth Rock became famous because the Pilgrims, no fools they, packed beer for the arduous journey from England, knowing that water would make them even sicker than the rolling and pitching of the Mayflower. But while heading for Virginia, they ran out of suds and so had to put in at Plymouth Rock to start brewing more beer. If they had been sailing down the East River 350 years later they might not have had to stop.

In 1973, to protest a proposed tax which would make it more difficult to compete with national brewers, the Liebmann Brewery dumped 100,000 gallons of Rheingold Extra Dry into the East River. This was maybe the only time in history when the water of the East River was safe to drink.

Water is such an important part of brewing that “lite” beer was invented to prove it. To beer lovers, lite beer IS water. In fact, in a recent blindfolded tasting several members of Draught Board 15 were unable to distinguish Coor’s Light from Perrier.

Breweries have varied sources for the water they use to brew, the late beer guru, Michael Jackson cited several. The Lapin Kulta Brewery of Lappland uses water from a local river, Malta’s Farson’s Brewery collects rainwater from reservoirs on its roof and the famed Rodenbach Brewery of Belgium brews with water from a lake fed by underground springs. but most breweries just use local water. Newark’s Ballantine had its own wells but used that water to clean and flush toilets. Newark city water, the best I’ve ever drank, was used to make Ballantine Beer, XXX Ale, and the long gone but well remembered Ballantine IPA.

Beer advertising in the United States has always relied heavily on water to promote brands. Olympia brewery of Tumwater, Washington said it all with its famous slogan “It’s The Water”. Many beers bragged about their use of “pure” water (what else were they going to use, “sewer” water?). Reading’s Sunshine beer claimed to brew with “mountain spring water” but the still thriving Straub’s one –ups that with PURE ”mountain spring water.

For years, Minnesota’s Hamm’s Brewery relied on the slogan “Refreshing as the Land of Sky Blue Waters” to sell their beer. Buffalo’s Simon Pure Brewery assured drinkers that Simon Pure was brewed only with “cavern spring water” and the First National Brewery (could you open a savings account there as well?)  of McKeesport, Pa. stated that “We use water from a historical mountain spring for ALL our beer. The use of the word “all” (instead of merely stating “our beer”) leads one to surmise that the brewery believed that some consumers suspected that NOT all their beer was brewed with water from a historical mountain spring. Maybe these doubters thought only SOME of their beer was brewed with those waters. If there was any basis for those suspicions it naturally makes one wonder with what water the REST of their beer was brewed!

Some breweries subscribed to the real estate marketing strategy of “location, location, location “ in touting their beers’ water sources. Weber’s Old Fashioned Beer of Sheyboygan, Wi. used only “Famous Wisconsin Water.” Casco Bay Brewing uses only “pure Maine water”, Barmann’s took advantage of Catskill Mountain water and Coor’s always promotes its Rocky Mountain water. Maybe the Deep South would have had a more robust brewing industry if its breweries had brought in tank car loads from other sources. A great promo would have been for a Florida panhandle brewery to proclaim they used only fresh-delivered Newark. N.J. water in their beer.

Many breweries bragged about using artesian well water, among them Camden County Beverage Company of Camden, N.J. (whose label looked mighty like a Budweiser label…..great marketing strategy, there) and Furmann and Schmidt of Shamokin, Pa. Another brand from F&S was Polski Piwo, evidently aimed at the demographic of Polish coal miners in the area, which was brewed with “superb” water.

Mineral springs also are promoted heavily as sources of brewing water.The Schwartzenbach brewery of 

 Hornell, N.Y. brewed it’s Old Ranger brand with the “Famous Water of Old Ranger Spring” and it’s KDK

Cream Ale contained only “soft mineral water”. Bingo Beer was brewed with “sparkling” spring water. Would this mean that the beer needed no further carbonation? The current micro, Great Northern brews it’s

Wheatfish with “pure glacier water”.

All this talk of water has made me a little thirsty, so I think I’ll have beer. But of course only one brewed with city, artesian well, river, mineral spring, mountain, desalinated, glacier, cavern, sparkling, rain or lake water!

“Buying Beer"

Unless you steal it or brew your own, if you want a beer you generally have to buy it. Of course there’s always the freebie provided by the guy who says “This one’s on me”, but since barroom etiquette demands you return the favor , what have you actually gained? In fact it may even cost you more because if you only stopped in for one and some acquaintance on the other side of the bar instructs the bartender to “take it from here”, you now have to buy him one in return, and since it’s impolite to force  him to drink it alone, it requires  having another one yourself.

Obviously this could go on all night, which is why I prefer to buy my own beer. My departed former father-

in-law also preferred to pay his own way and when going out for a pint with him, I have heard that Virginia

gentleman reply to the offer of a beer in his slow Richmond drawl “Thank you, but if you buy me a beer then I’ll have to buy you a beer and I really don’t want to buy you a beer, so I think I’ll just sit here and have a beer with my Yankee son-in-law”. Right to the point!

But whether the beer is paid for by you or someone else, in America it’s price is usually taken from cash

laying on the bar or running a tab and settling up at the end of the pinting session. A recent trip to Scotland reminded me this is not standard practice everywhere. In British pubs you hand your money to the bartender and extend your palm for any change. Almost never do you see money on the bar.

In Germany, Austria, and the Czech Republic beers are just delivered to your table and marks are made on the back of your coaster. No money changes hands until it’s time to leave and the checkmarks are tallied. But the table waitresses have eyes like hawks and memories like elephants so don’t even think you’re ever going to get away with anything like playing musical coasters!

Some, thankfully not all, beer festivals in the United States issue little strips of tickets with your tasting

glass for the admission price, with one ticket being good for one sample. This is probably because some imbecilic nanny state legislator thought this system would help to curtail excessive tasting. But at some festivals I have attended, when your tasting ticket is handed to the pourer, it’s deposited into a large bowl in front of the taps with hundreds of other redeemed tickets eagerly awaiting reincarnation in order to be handed to the next brewer down the line and then taking another rest in his bowl. So much for nanny state mentality attempting to curtail ingenuity.  

Bavarian Oktoberfests in this area also generally use the ticket system but the rigidity of the Teutonic mindset makes certain that “VUN TICKET ISS GUT FOR VUN DINCKELACHER UND DOT”S ITT!!” No tickets are needed, however, for buying beer in Germany from beer vending machines, conveniently located in airport cab stands, railroad stations, parks, museums and highway rest stops.

A precursor to the ticket system of buying beer was the beer token, a wooden nickel proclaiming something like “Good For One Stoney’s Beer”. These tokens could be redeemed at any tavern featuring Stoney’s on tap, and actually became a form of “illegal tender”. A housewife, glomming a Stoney’s token from her sleeping husband’s pants pocket, might barter for some green beans from a thirsty grocer who felt like stopping for a cold one after a hard day’s work.

A modern day example of the beer token is provided by the resurrected Christian Moerlein brewery. This

brewpub, located next to the Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati, in order to recognize a great tradition from the original brewery’s past, offers a pouch of five coins, minted by a local private mint for $25, with each coin redeemable at the pub for one of their house brewed craft beers.

These coins are seemingly inflation proof, making them worth more than US coinage, but I wonder if there’s some sort of disclaimer. If the brewery survives fifty years and a guy walks in with a Moerlein coin purchased for $5 in 2013 attempting to a buy a $30 pint of Saengerfest Lager with it, will the coin be honored? Or will the coin be worth more than the price of a pint to a 2063 breweriana collector? Only time will tell.

One of the strangest systems I’ve seen for buying beer was many years ago on the Canadian side of the

Thousand Islands in a place called The Beer Store. Upon entering you noticed twelve packs of a large variety of Canadian beers displayed on a large wall. You either told the attendant or pointed to which one you wanted, he pressed a hidden button and the desired twelve pack suddenly appeared at the bottom a nearby roller chute. Luckily, my Labatt’s IPA came correctly as ordered, but if a twelver of Mooshead had arrived incorrectly was I going to be expected to push it back up the chute?

Airports are notorious for their usurious charges on everything so I wasn’t too surprised when I was

charged $4 for a Pabst Blue Ribbon forty years ago at Newark. But what was amazing to me at the time was HOW I was charged. The frosted stein was place under a tap, a button was pushed, the suds flowed into the glass, shut off when full and “ka-ching” was automatically heard from the cash register.  At $4 for a

PBR in 1973 I wasn’t going to have another anyway, but certainly flight delayed folks who wanted more than one sure as hell weren’t going to get one on the house.

A great way to buy beer was one I was not lucky enough to have experienced. In Will Anderson’s “Beer

USA” is a full page photo of the Texan Hotel Drugstore in Dallas. On the front of the building in addition to two signs informing potential patrons that prescriptions could be obtained within, were FOUR signs proclaiming “Look! All the Schepp’s Beer (aged in redwood) you can drink….60 cents per hour”. But this was not as good as it seems. The picture appears to be circa 1935. A minimum wage was not introduced until 1938 and then it was only a quarter an hour, so a drinker would have to spend about two and a half hours worth of pay to drink an hour’s worth of Schepp’s.  The average price of a beer in 1935 was a dime so at least seven glasses would have to be downed to make the hour worthwhile. And there’s no mention of overtime possibly costing time and a half!

For all those who buy beer there are also some who DON’T buy beer. There are always the sneaky change

stealers thinking no one is watching while they move bar cash from in front of you to in front of them. But

sneakier than the change stealers was the former Gaslight regular who, although he was willing to buy his

own, ( on a house tab, of course) had just been cut off due to over- imbibing. Undaunted by this sad turn of events and desiring more beer, while I was engaged in conversation, he simply poured the contents of my pint into his empty glass. Somehow, you have to admire that kind of spunk.

The Richmond, Fredricksburg and Potomac Railroad runs through the Quantico Marine Base and separates the base from the town of Quantico, home to a number of drinking establishments, one of which was located only forty feet or so from the tracks. Occasionally, cashless Marines, finding themselves thirsty a few days before payday, would wait until a train stopped, blocking the main street. Timing their getaway, they would wait until the train barely started to move again, madly race out of the saloon and duck under the train while running out on their bar tabs. By the time the train was gone, they were gone.

But that only works once and is extremely dangerous so it’s a pretty poor way to not buy beer, especially in

light of the fact that Ballantine beer could be purchased on the base for a mere sixty cents a sixpack.

Recently I stopped in a pub which shall remain nameless for a cold beer on a sweltering summer afternoon. This pub is known for its very decent selection of craft taps and it’s open air front. I just wanted one and laid a twenty on the bar while the barmaid was pouring my pint. Setting the glass in front of me and picking up the twenty, she asked if I had anything smaller to which I replied in the negative. She then told me she had no change, possibly hoping I would say “keep it”.

Since I was only having one, that certainly wasn’t going to happen, so I offered my credit card, but she pointed to sign that said “minimum credit card charge $10.” We were at an impasse, but not wanting to be a deadbeat and not blaming her for her boss’s failure to provide her with a cash drawer, I went next door to a bank to make change so I could buy my beer. What a way to run a business!

Thinking about that incident makes me a little thirsty, so I think I’ll go buy a beer. (After making sure I have various denominations of money in my kick)