Summer is here and in a big way.  We broke triple digits here in Southwest Idaho this week and it has been sweltering on the East Coast for some time now.  With the heat and humidity of summer, all the outdoor activities and yard work we tend to need a beer. What beer to choose then when you reach into the beer fridge?  

Summer beers or “lawnmower” beers tend to be light in body and crisp with a very clean, dry finish.  Beers like American style lagers and pilsners have been the go-to beer in the US for a long time now but there are a lot more options.  Kolsch, dortmunder, Belgian pale ales, Tripels, sour ales and saisons are all excellent choices and increasingly more accessible.

Here’s my list of the 10 beers you should be drinking this summer when sitting on the patio, while mowing the lawn, hanging at the lake, floating the river or chillin’ next to a campfire.

1.       Alaskan Summer Ale:  Alaskan Summer Ale is a German style called a Kolsch.  Kolsch beers are clean and crisp with a mildly tangy finish.  It’s hard to believe that a brewery in Alaska, a place not known for intense summer heat would make one of the most refreshing summer beers out there, but they have this one down pat.  

2.       Oskar Blues Mama’s Little Yella Pils:  Those of you looking for a beer that’s a little closer to the standard Bud/Miller/Coors beers may I suggest this gem from Oskar Blues.  Oskar Blues made its name with Dale’s Pale Ale and Old Chub Scottish Ale but with the introduction of Mama’s Little Yella Pils they created an excellent beer that is a gateway from the macro-brews to quality craft beer.  What makes this beer even more enticing for Summer is the fact that it only comes in 12 oz cans so its great in the cooler no matter where you’re headed.

3.       Franziskaner Hefeweizen:  Widmer and Blue Moon may have become staples in bars across America but the gold standard for hefeweizen is still Franziskaner.  Soft and mildly creamy with a distinct citrusy bite, this beer is epitomizes summer for me.  If this beer came in cans here in America it would be in every cooler on every river and in every campsite.

4.       Elysian Avatar Jasmine IPA:  IPA’s have been the hot style now for a few years especially here in the Northwest so it’s no surprise that we’re now starting to see tweaks to the style.  Elysian’s addition of jasmine makes this beer a floral aromatic nose bomb but it also delivers on the tongue with a well balanced but still obviously a Northwest style IPA.  You have this beer with some Thai food while sitting on the patio at dusk and you will know what summer taste like.

5.       Maui Brewing CoCoNut Porter:  Maui Brewing has seen amazing growth in its short life and almost all of that has come from this now iconic brew.  Maui CoCoNut Porter may not seem like a natural choice for summer but trust me, the mildly sweet coconut flavors meld so nicely with the coffee and chocolate notes you find in a traditional porter.  So at your next backyard BBQ and you’ve got a big plate of ribs in front of you crack open a CoCoNut Porter, take a bite out of one of those hunks of pork and wile away a summers night in total contentment.  

6.       Great Divide Belgica Belgian Style IPA:  Yet another variation on the IPA and I have to say, it’s a great variation indeed.  Great Divide, according to Beer Advocate is the fourth best brewery in the world and honestly I really can’t argue with that.  Belgica has that great Belgian twang both on the nose and on the palette but it’s backed up with a solid hop bitterness that together makes a near perfectly balanced beer that is great at a softball game, campsite or just hanging out with friends.

7.       Boulevard Saison-Brett:  Boulevard brewing is from a place that almost no one thinks of when thinking of craft beer, Kansas City.  Maybe they benefit from low expectations a little bit but the Saison-Brett is one of the best beers in America.  The addition of brettanomyces to the beer creates a pleasant tartness that is so perfectly balanced so delicious that you will wake up in the middle of the night craving this beer.  Food-wise this beer pairs well with a ton of great summer foods.  You can serve this with grilled salmon, raw oysters and clams, grilled chicken, sharp cheeses and summer salads and fruit.

8.       Rogue Somer Honey:  Rogue has been a staple of the Northwest beer scene for years now and has blazed a trail for all the other breweries that have come after them.  When you drink a bottle of Rogue you’re drinking a little Northwestern craft beer history.  Rogue’s Somer Honey is a summer beer for lovers of summer beers.  The closest style for this beer is a Belgian witte but that doesn’t really sum up what this beer is.  The depth that the honey brings to the beer is balanced by fruitiness and a solid spice profile that makes this beer so enjoyable.  This is also a great transition beer for those that are used to the macro-brews.  

9.       Anderson Valley Summer Solstice Cerveza Crema:  This is a beer that defies all description.  A velvety smooth creamy texture with a sweet caramel malt flavor will leave you totally befuddled and trying to explain it to those around why this beer is so awesome.  What’s even better about this beer is that it comes in both bottles and cans so it’s perfect for the rafting trip or the weekend camping trip.  Anderson Valley is one of the most underrated breweries in the country and Summer Solstice is a beer that has totally flown under the radar but I suspect that that is about to change and in a big way.  

10.    21st Amendment Hell or High Watermelon Wheat:  Don from Beer and Whiskey Brothers is going to hate that I made this the number one summer beer but he just needs to face the fact that this is a great summer beer and is deserving of this honor.  Now let me say, this beer taste nothing like what you’d expect.  Instead of tasting sweet like the red part of the watermelon it taste more like the white part of the watermelon rind.  It’s definitely melonny (is melonny a word?) but its subtle enough that you aren’t weirded out by it.  A little trick to enjoying this beer is to serve it with a wedge of watermelon that you’ve salted with a little kosher salt.  This really heightens the experience and makes for a refreshing summer experience.  Food wise, I’d serve this beer with BBQ’d chicken, ribs, salads or as a great session beer.  You honestly can not go wrong with this beer, it’s a fantastic summer beer fit for all your summer activities.

So there you have it, this year’s summer beer selection.  No matter what you’re doing this summer these beers are beers that are both delicious and crowd pleasers so you can rest assured that your cohorts will be happy to quaff these beer with you. Whether you’re by the pool, the campfire, in the boat or floating the river these are the beers that will define your summer.   

• Beer Connoisseur: Innovators Series -Vinnie Cilurzo, Russian River Brewing.
• Brookston Beer Bulletin: Brewery Openings Surge.
• Mutineer Magazine: FTW: Willow Garage Invents “Beer Me, Robot”.
• HereForTheBeer: Slow Fest – A Celebration of Session Beer.
• Beer News from BeerAdvocate: Odell Brewing Celebrates 10,000th Brew (Odell will be here for Boise BeerFest, have we mentioned that yet?).
• Beernews.org: Samuel Adams Chocolate Bock coming back in 12 oz. bottles and 21st Amendment Back in Black cans now available (we'll let you know as soon as we get our hands on it).
• Grizzly Growler: Kids in breweries – Wrong or right? (what's your take on drinking establishments that allow kids in?)

• Birmingham Weekly: Beer of the week: Avery Seventeen.
• The Beer Babe: Southern Tier – Gemini (review).
• Bike, Beer, BBQ: Orval Trappist Ale (video review).
• Beernews: Great Divide Smoked Baltic Porter debuts next month (we'll let you know as soon as we can get our hands on this one).
• Confessions of a Beer Geek: Two great things that go great together: Beer & Trains!
• DRAFTmag: Five beach-worthy beers.
• Simply Beer: Lost Abbey Framboise de Amorosa (we're trying, ya better believe it!)

We don’t typically think too much about gender roles in what we eat and drink, we just accept that some things are appropriate for men and some for women -- and when those lines cross, it’s like when the beams get crossed in Ghostbusters, chaos ensues. Well, I for one, am openly advocating chaos. If a man wants to drink a cosmo and a woman wants to enjoy an imperial stout I say good on them both. Drink what you want and tell the world to shut the hell up.

This notion that beer is for men and wine and fruity cocktails is for women is rooted very deeply in our cultural subconscious and our history. These stereotypes have been reinforced by marketers and manufacturers of beer, wine and spirits for decades now. While no one really benefits they are hesitant to challenge the status quo because it plays into those longstanding cultural norms.

Beer advertisements have especially been guilty of this by tying beer so closely to male-oriented sporting events and activities. If you look at television ads from the 50’s and 60’s all the way through today you can see that other than the end of animated characters in the ads the way beer is presented to the public has changed very little. Women are background characters there only to entice young men into buying whatever watered down pilsener or they’re shown as lacking any understanding of men and their fixation on beer.

Two examples of this are the Miller Lite ads from a few years back with the girls wrestling in a fountain and the Heineken ads featuring the walk-in closet and cooler. In the Miller Lite ad the girls and their catfight are the fantasy of two guys who think this would be a great commercial, their dates sit looking completely vexed by this conversation and it closes with the two fantasy girls making out. The other ad is the Heineken ad that features a group of women fawning over a new walk-in closet when they hear shrieks of joy coming from downstairs where men are fawning over a walk-in cooler filled with green bottles of Heineken. Neither of these ads would lead any woman to want to enjoy a beer instead of glass of wine or a cocktail. If you’re going to market to women you need a more sophisticated approach that doesn’t insult their intelligence or paint them as blow-up dolls.

Now in an examination of what men drink and why we find a very different reason why they choose beer over other beverages, it’s all about being manly and not appearing feminine. The guy with the beer is the guy that gets the girl, is on the winning team of whatever sport is being featured at that time and is rugged & self-confident. This leaves all other beverages except for whiskies as the preferred drink of women and homosexuals. Here in the store we hear ciders and fruit beers often referred to as “chick” drinks all the time which is really a shame since these products can be truly amazing and very approachable for everyone, men or women. Unfortunately too many American men are so insecure in their sexuality they can’t bring themselves to be seen with something insufficiently manly.

The same thing is seen with women except for them it’s not ciders and fruit beers that are suspect of inappropriate beverage choice it’s stouts, porters or other “dark” beers. All too often a woman will complain that they find Guinness disgusting or thick or bitter or whatever they’ve been led to think about it after maybe having a sip of it just once years back at a St. Patricks Day party after having five or six crappy green beers. When you challenge them on this and pour them a taste of Old Rasputin for example they discover that in actuality they’re a stout drinker. What’s odd about this is even though they really enjoy it, they rarely leave with a bottle because it wouldn’t look right for them to be drinking something like that while all their friends are having a glass of Chardonnay.

Well I say it’s time to shake off the shackles that bind us to these outdated stereotypes, belly up to the bar and experience something new, something that the drink police find inappropriate for us no matter what our gender. If you’re a man pick up a bottle of cider or mead from a craft cidery or meadery. If you’re a woman, pick up an imperial stout or IPA and if anyone has a problem with what you’re drinking, then that’s their problem.]]> Mon, 12 Jul 2010 21:07:09 +0000 http://brewforia.com/blog/why-dont-you-have-Pliny-The-Elder/

Why can’t I buy the beers I want, no matter where I live?

Since we launched our website and more recently opened our first brick and mortar location I have been asked this question literally dozens of times every week.  The answer always raises more questions, so I thought I would take the blog post this week and try and provide a little more clarity on the issues restricting access to the beers we covet.

Right off the bat I have to address the real reason that a small brewpub in Vermont doesn’t have beer on the supermarket shelves of Michigan or Montana and simply put, that’s capacity.  Breweries can only produce so much product on their equipment at a time and it's this factor that prevents breweries like Dogfish Head or Russian River from satiating the needs of their thirsty fans across the country.  Brewers walk a very thin line with capacity since all that equipment is incredibly expensive.  To not have the demand needed to keep it humming could spell financial ruin, so expansion has to be weighed very carefully.

So now that we have what I would consider the legitimate reason behind this issue, let us look at the other issues that keep you from enjoying a Pliny or Two Hearted tonight with dinner.

In the documentary Beer Wars they talked a lot about the three-tier system, this is the system that was put in place at the end of prohibition in the United States that was supposed to help regulate the sale of alcohol from state to state.  It may have had a legitimate goal at one time, but today it is the single biggest obstacle to true consumer freedom. 

The three tier system works like this: at the end of prohibition the regulation of alcohol sales went back to the states so each state could choose to allow or to ban the sale of beer, wine and spirits. States that allowed the sales of alcohol could determine the specific conditions for that sale to take place. This is why in some states you can buy liquor in the supermarket and in others you have to go to a state owned liquor store. 

At the same time the states were taking control of alcohol regulation there were new regulations put in place that strictly defined what each cog in the alcohol production and sale machine were allowed to do.  Manufacturers of alcohol could not distribute or sell to consumers, so distributors and importers were created to buy the product from the brewers, vintners and spirits producers and then sell it to the retailers who then sold it to consumers.  Each manufacturer had to sign exclusive contracts with distributors in each state they wish to sell their product in.  These distributors then have exclusive rights to those brands in the geographic territory that they have been granted rights to by the state.

Now that all seems very tidy and even convenient for the manufacturer and the consumer but over time as the craft beer renaissance and the internet revolution have started in the United States this system has made it very difficult for consumers to get many of the most highly sought-after beers.  Now don’t get me wrong, I know that it isn’t possible for small independent breweries to market, distribute and sell their products in states across the country, they need a network of distributors to work for them so they can focus on making world class beer.  But...and this is a big but, the National Beer Wholesalers Association has used the three-tier system as a blunt instrument to prevent direct-sales of beer to consumers either over the internet or in many cases right in the brewers own state or municipality.  They have even gone so far as to push legislation in Congress that would effectively end any potential for online beer or wine sales if it passes.  H.R. 5034, also known as the Comprehensive Alcohol Regulatory Effectiveness Act of 2010 or the CARE Act has more than 100 co-sponsors in the house and the NBWA and the WSWA (Wine and Spirits Wholesalers Association) have contributed $11.55 million since 2005 to make this bill a law.  

There is good news however; many states have realized the opportunity for job creation and tax revenue that comes with a thriving craft beer industry and have begun to raise the maximum production allowed for self distribution and for on-premise sales of beer at breweries and tasting rooms.  This has allowed breweries to get their product into the hands of consumers without fighting for shelf space against the big breweries but it doesn’t do much to help consumers in other states.

At its heart, it is equally an issue with spurring tax revenue from the burgeoning craft beer market and enabling true consumer choice. Citizens should be allowed to choose which beer, wine or spirits that they want, to not have that decision made by distributors whose only concern is which product they can move the fastest and hence, help out the bottom line the most.

If you support consumer choice please contact your Congressmen and urge them to vote against H.R. 5034.

http://www.behindthemenu.com/2010/01/16/if-beer-had-a-theme-park/

Now there are a lot of things I love about this recipe.  Right up front its easy, pretty quick to prepare and actually quite cheap to make but it delivers a big plate full of hearty flavors that can only be matched by something like homemade beef stew.  I think if you make this dish this weekend you'll find that it becomes one of your favorites and may even get a slot on the weekly rotation.

Grilled Chicken Marsala

Equipment:

Charcoal or Gas Grill
10” Skillet
Tongs
Wisk
Chef’s knife

Ingredients:

2 lbs Skinless Chicken Breast       
1 lbs Brown Mushrooms           
1/2 Yellow Onion               
2 Cloves Garlic               
1 Tbs Butter                   
3 Tbs Olive Oil
1 oz Fresh Rosemary
2 Tbs Kosher Salt
2 Tbs Ground Black Pepper
1 Cup Marsala Wine
2 1/2 Cups Chicken Broth
2 Tsp Potato Starch
2 Tbs Fresh Parsley
2 Tbs Grated Parmesan

Preparation:

Sauce
Place skillet with the butter and 1 Tbs olive oil over medium high heat
Slice onions and mince garlic and add to skillet once hot
While the onions and garlic are browning slice mushrooms
Add 1 Tbs salt and the mushrooms to the skillet and toss to combine
Brown mushrooms over medium high heat stirring occasionally
Once the mushrooms are thoroughly browned (10 to 12 minutes) deglaze the skillet by adding the marsala wine
Add the chicken stock and allow to simmer for 10 minutes
Add the potato starch and stir in, sauce will thicken slightly
Reduce the heat to low

Chicken
Trim the chicken breast of all fat
Thoroughly coat the chicken breast in 2 oz olive oil, 2 Tbs kosher salt, 2 Tbs black pepper and 1 oz fresh rosemary
Grill the chicken for 3 minutes on each side or until done
Remove from the grill and allow to rest on a platter under foil for 5 minutes
Spoon finished sauce over the chicken breast garnish with chopped parsley and grated parmesan

Serving:

You'll want to serve this one family style from a great big platter in the middle of the table with the sides in smaller platters or bowls.  This dish looks really impressive all laid out and your dinner partners will think you are a genius when they tuck into it.  As for beverage pairing you can really go two ways with this one.  If you want to accentuate the meatiness of the mushrooms and the sweetness of the wine go with a great fall beer like a mai-bock or even a doppelbock.  If you want to show off the wine and its more delicate side pair it with an oak aged beer with a little acidity like Dogfish Head Burton Baton.

I hope you all enjoy it.

Cheers!

Grilled Chicken Marsala by Brewforia Beer Market is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at brewforia.com.

With fall comes cider by Brewforia Beer Market is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at brewforia.com.

I don't know about you but when fall rolls around I tend to crave spicy, hearty soups, there's really nothing better on a cold fall night than to sit down to a big bowl of steamy goodness.  It's with this in mind that I have started to develop a line of recipes that everyone can enjoy especially with an frosty craft beer.

The first recipe in the series is my Fire Roasted White Chili with Chicken which is one of my all time favorites and is very healthy and full flavored. Here's what you will need to get this recipe started.

Ingredients

3 Skin on Chicken Breast       
1 Tbls Ground Cumin
2 Jalapenos Chiles       
11/2 Tsp Ground Coriander   
2 Anaheim Chiles           
1 Tbls White Pepper
2 Poblano Chiles           
3 Tbls Kosher Salt
1 Whole Yellow Onion       
Juice of One Lime
6 Cloves Garlic           
3 Minced Scallions
2 Small Tomatoes Diced       
3 Tbls Fresh Cilantro
2 Tbls Olive Oil           
3 Cups Chicken Broth       
2 Can Cannelloni Beans
2 Cups Chicken Broth or Stock 

Equipment

1 Stock Pot or Large Saucier
Tongs
Ladle
Chef’s knife
Food processor

Preparation

Place whole chiles under oven broiler or over direct flame until skin is charred on all sides then set aside to cool. 

While the chiles are cooling liberally salt and pepper chicken breast and place stock pot over medium high heat and add the olive oil.  Once the oil is shimmering place the chicken breast in the pot skin side down for 4 minutes then turn for an additional 3 minutes.  At the end of the last 3 minutes remove from the pot and put to the side.

While chicken is browning halve the chiles and remove the seeds and dice the Poblano’s, Anaheim's and a large yellow onion into 1/4 inch pieces and mince the Jalapenos.  Dice your 2 tomatoes into 1 inch pieces, crush your garlic and add all the vegetables to the pot along with 1 cup of chicken broth.  Once this reaches a simmer remove 1 cup of the vegetables and place in the food processor along with half a can of beans and puree until smooth then add back to the pot along with the remaining beans and broth.

Bring the soup to a heavy simmer and add the salt, white pepper, coriander and cumin.  Remove the skin from the chicken and add it back to the pot and allow to simmer for 15 minutes.  Remove the chicken and shred it then place it back into the pot along with the lime juice, fresh chopped scallions and cilantro.  Simmer for 5 minutes and serve with fresh lime wedges and cilantro leaves.

I have a buddy who regularly keeps a keg of Alpha Dog Imperial IPA around. The problem is if he drinks as much as he wants, Alpha, with a hefty 8.9% ABV, makes him hallucinate before dinner's served. When he admitted to prepping with a few Miller Lights, I knew it was time for an intervention.

I had to explain the concept of session beer: beer low on alcohol and big on flavor, allowing you to enjoy more of what you love (without lapsing into totally antisocial behavior).

Lew Bryson, a beer enthusiast in Philadelphia, has founded the Session Beer Project. Essentially, it's his unofficial movement to encourage craft beer brewers to apply their expertise to making beers full of flavor, not effect. Lew sets 4.5% ABV as the limit, but others are more generous, maxing out at 5%.

Session beers, also called small beers, have a history as long as brewing itself. In the past, small beers came from the second or third runnings of mash. This produced a beer served to children in place of disease-laden water. Today, brewers like Anchor Brewing honor this tradition. Their Small Ale (3.3% ABV) comes from the second runnings of the mash from Old Foghorn Barleywine Style Ale (8-10% ABV).

In 1757, George Washington recorded his "To Make Small Beer" recipe in his personal journal.  The English, Scots, and Irish have been masters of the small beer recipe for centuries.  Think Guinness, celebrating its 250^th anniversary:  deep dark color, medium body, and an alcohol content of about 4.5%.

Crafting beers with less alcohol but plenty of flavor can be challenging because there's no room for imperfections to hide. For a big beer, more grain means more flavor and more alcohol. For small beer brewers, the challenge is to extract big flavor from less grain.

More American breweries are meeting this challenge. Take recent winners from the Session Beer category at the Great American Beer Festival. Or, check out brewers who will be presenting at the cleverly named Conn-O-Session at the Kennett Brewfest October 10, 2009, in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania (yes, Lew Bryson had his hand in this).

As for me, the next time my buddy and I hangout, we’ll enjoy a few Gone Fishin’ from Beer Valley, a completely sessionable brew.

Rick Boyd

* The joy of small beer by Brewforia Beer Market is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at brewforia.com.

Five years ago if you'd asked me if I drank canned beer I would have looked at you like you were crazy. At that time good beer in cans was about as easy to find as the secret to cold fusion but all that has changed. Today we have more and more craft brewers turning to cans to get their tasty brews in the hands of thirsty world and we should all be embracing them. 

Canned beer makde its debut in 1935. In partnership with the American Can Company, the Gottfried Krueger Brewing Company delivered 2,000 cans of Krueger's Finest Beer and Krueger's Cream Ale to faithful Krueger drinkers in Richmond, Virginia. Ninety-one percent of the drinkers approved of the canned beer, driving Krueger to give the green light to further production. That was the beginning of a new era for beer drinkers as this was the first time beer was truly portable.

Since that day in 1935 canned beer has come a long way. From modest beginnings of a can that needed a church key type opener to a screw top can that was also used to package oil to the pop top to specially lined cans and finally to cans that turn colors when they're cold enough to drink. Some of these developments have been nothing but gimmicks but there are reasons why canned beer has survived all this time even though beer drinkers when asked always say they prefer a bottle. 

There are obvious commercial and industrial reasons such as cost, durability etc but there is one big reason cans are superior to glass, freshness. Beer unlike wine is always best when its fresh and the enemy of fresh beer is UV light. Beer bottles come in lots of colors but the reason most are brown is to try and block out as much light as possible. Cans being made of aluminum shield beer from all light making the can the best vessle for maintaining freshness of your chosen beverage. 

The other big culprit to skunky beer is air. Not to long ago I pulled out a Belgian Sour that I'd been saving for a specialy occassion only to discover that the cap didn't have a airtight seal so sadly my beer was toast. Since bottles are made of glass and the closures are either aluminum or cork the seals can be imperfect and that leads to skunky and or flat beer from time to time. Cans on the otherhand have closures that are built into the vessel so they seal up tight every time. 

Of course cans can't handle every beer that's made, Belgians in particular are a challenge. Many Belgian beers are bottle conditioned and the pressure of the additional fermentation makes cans unsuitable for beers with higher pressure packaging. That's not to say there aren't some great beers out there in cans that you can get your hands on right now. Some of the brewers that have started packaging in cans include New Belgium, Oskar Blues, Kettlehouse, Caldera, and Anderson Valley. That's not a complete list since I'd bet there's one or two more that I haven't even run across yet. So get out there and track down a couple canned beers of your own and enjoy. 

 Cheers!

I love it in the Can by Rick Boyd is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at brewforia.com.

* Rogue Mierfest Oktoberfest Lager by Rick Boyd is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at brewforia.com.

The Details:
Style: Belgian Pale Ale
ABV: 6.5%

New Belgium's Lips of Faith series may seem silly thanks to that name but thankfully they are using it to produce some great beers. The Dandelion, Bier De Marrs, Le Folie, Dark Kriek, and Dunkelweiss are all variations on classic European styles and worthy of close examination. 

Tonight I cracked the Le Fleur Misseur Belgian style Pale Ale. It pours a beautiful hazy golden color with a tight bright white head with a creamy texture. Head retention is excellent and the lacing is better than average. 

This beer taste a lot like one of my favorites, Orval but lacks some of the malty sweetness of that beer but keeps a lot of its complexity. Black pepper comes through up front and is followed by green apple, fresh grass and mustiness from the Belgian yeast. This is one of the better Belgian style beers from American brewers and with a little age on it I think it will be even better.

This beer would make an excellent accompaniment with dinner. Pair this beer with spicy Thai food, mussels, soft cheeses, salads or lobster. Pick up a couple bottles for your next dinner party and serve this with the salad course and watch as your guest are blown away by it. They won't reach for white wine again I promise you.

* New Belgium Le Fleur Misseur Belgian Style Pale Ale by Rick Boyd is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at www.brewforia.com.

Red Hook Late Harvest Autumn Ale

* Red Hook Late Harvest Autumn Ale by Rick Boyd is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at brewforia.com.