Better Know a Continent: Australia

At the request of my friend Shelby, who's abroad in Australia, I've reviewed some Australian beer. I picked up the four best I could find. There were two others, Toohey's New, which has horrible reviews on BeerAdvocate, and Bluetongue Pilsner, which apparently isn't horrible, but got a crappy review in a beer mag I read recently.

That leaves us with Coopers Brewery and a lager from James Boag:

James Boag's Premium Lager: Nothing special, just a sweet inoffensive lager.

Coopers Original Pale Ale: It may be original, but it sure ain't special.

Coopers Sparkling Ale: Like the above two beers but lighter and with more carbonation.

Coopers Dark Ale: Not bad. Some cocoa flavors come through here, still a little bland.

Coopers Best Extra Stout: This is an old review. By fall the best Aussie beer I've tried. As a stout it gives Guinness a kick in the sack.

And yeah, there's probably some Foster's oil cans somewhere around Syracuse, btu we all know it sucks anyways. I do hear Foster's Bitter is drinkable. Also, check out this beer map of Australia for breweries. As far as I can tell Little Creatures Brewing is the best brewery in the land.

Cheers.

New Brew: Hefeweizen

Here's a quick brewing update. I just finished brewing up a batch of German wheat beer, here's the run-down:

5# wheat malt
4# German pilsner malt
6 oz. Caravienne
1 oz. Saaz (3.8% AA) @ 60 min
1/2 tsp Irish Moss @ 15 min

149 F mash for 30 min
1 gal decoction for 15 min

SG: 1.047
Anticipated FG: 1.010
Anticipated alcohol: 4.6%

Notes: I attempted to vorlauf as per the someone's suggestion of pouring the recirculated wort over fin foil. This worked until my mash would get stuck. Use rice hulls on the next batch of wheat beer.

Celebrating with beer

This Tuesday afternoon I got the call from Rodale offering me a six-month paid internship with Men's Health. I've been sweating this internship out for a month or so now and finally getting offered it was great news. To celebrate, I went with Christine down to the Blue Tusk, a beer bar with 69 taps and good food, for a little snack and beer.

This was a pretty big day considering all that happened. In the morning I went out for my first road ride of the year, a nearly 2:30 bike with Lindsey that included three 10-minute hill repeats. I was so fucking tired and muddy after. I took a picture for posterity. Notice the mud freckles and don't mind the chest hair.

It was also my two-year anniversary with my girlfriend Christine. Until now, I didn't know you could date someone that long and still like them. It works for me, go figure. We had a great dinner at Pastabilities and then went back to the Blue Tusk for a couple dessert beers, Goose Island Imperial IPA and Leffe Brown.

New beers:

Leinenkugel's Sunset Wheat - Jacob recommended this one to me a while ago and I had one with dinner tonight. It's not a bad summer beer.

Goose Island Imperial IPA - Pretty good, but not quite great. The hops need some fine tuning so the finer flavors aren't overrun.

Leffe Brown - A smooth dark Belgian, but a little flavorless. I call it the Guinness of Beligum, looks fantastic but tastes so-so.

Brooklyn Smoked Weissbock - An interesting (and strong) wheat beer thats big on malt flavor.

Magic Hat's Ravell - A nice vanilla porter. Tastes like chocolate and vanilla candy.

New Weekend, New Beer

I didn't get too crazy this weekend, although I may have drank a little too enthusiastically at a friend's belated St. Patrick's Day. The picture has me, our friend Nate, and Christine on a couch. I ended the night funneling (the logic being after college it'll never be socially acceptable to funnel beer) Genessee Cream Ale - a beer I have long-touted as one of the best cheap beers available. It cost a dollar or two more that Keystone and Natty Ice, but taste infinitely better. Not only is it inoffensive like a good cheap beer, but it actually has some pleasant flavor.

Thanks to the single beers available at The Party Source on Erie Blvd, I averaging one new beer a day for the second month in a row. This may sound like a lot, but those seven beers a week account for the majority of beer drinking. I like drinking and TASTING beer a lot more than getting drunk, which usually ends unpleasantly anyways.

New Beers:

Sierra Nevada Stout - A great beer if you love the taste of roasted grains, way richer than Guinness (screw Guinness).

Middle Ages Tripel Crown - An alcoholic, but unimpressive hybrid of Belgian and English brewing.

Arcadia Scotch Ale - A decent Scotch Ale if you're into this sort of thing.

Kuhnhenn Bourbon Barrel Barleywine - Best beer of the weekend, tasty, about 14% abv and amazingly smooth.

Thomas Hooker Irish Red - A rich, tasty red ale, but a little heavier than I'd have liked.

Saranac Pomegranate Wheat - Brand new from Saranac, nice and not overly-sweet like so many fruit beers.

Bitburger Premium Pils - One of the best imported pilsners available, mostly because it comes in a brown bottle (green bottles, like with Pilsner Urquel or Spaten, allow skunking).

Perla Chmielowa - A decent Polish pilsner, a little more mellow than Bitburger.

Cascazilla and LongShot Old Ale

Over the last couple days I've had Sam Adams' LongShot Old Ale and Ithaca Beer Co.'s Cascazilla. Both big beers in their own right. I've tried only a few old ales in my two years of tedious beer study, and haven't generally found them that appealing. The LongShot Old Ale really does it for me, however, and I'll be sad to see this one-time brew go.

Unlike a lot of similar malt-heavy English old ales and barleywines, this is neither too heavy or too sweet. It's just right. I gave it a 4.1 on BA and you can read my review here.

The Cascazilla was a completely different story. It was basically an over-hopped (i a good way) amber/red ale. The result is a beer that sings the praises of hops (citrus and piney flavors, they're good, really they are), without bing too alcoholic like most double IPAs that are around 10%. This garnered a 4/5 from me. It was good, but is just wasn't that complex.

The Hold Steady and Homebrew

It's been a good week in Syracuse for the most part. Following Gloria Steinem's Tuesday visit, the Hold Steady with Ra Ra Riot performed on campus. I saw about half the concert, missing most of Ra Ra Riot to beer-related activities, and missing the Hold Steady's encore for an interview with Nick Gurewitch (of the Perry Bible Fellowship) that didn't take place for another hour.

Before the concert, I was bottling the graduation beer I've been calling Otto's Grand Cru. This beer turned out to be an alcoholic disappointment. It's over 9% alcohol, but just doesn't taste that good. I contacted Jonny Lieberman, a renowned homebrewer in CA, about my problem as the recipe for the beer was based off of one of his beers. It turns out I didn't pick the proper yeast strain. I used a high-gravity Belgian strain, meaning the yeast was prepared to make a lot of booze. The problem was, the yeast fermented so well it didn't leave much flavor.

Typically, Belgian beers have wonderful fruit and spice flavors that develop from Belgian yeasts. Jonny recommended using a mixture of Trappist (specific Belgian brewing monks) and Abbey style yeasts mixed with the high-gravity yeast. In hindsight I also realized I could have made a small batch of beer, used proper yeast and blended, but its too late now. Brew and learn.

I also transfered my brown ale into the secondary fermentor today so I can bottle it soon. I took another taste with much excitement based off the tasting I had a few days ago and was a little let down. The complexity of the flavor was gone, and it came off a bit grainy. I'm not sure if I'll do anything to improve the flavor, its not too bad, just a little disappointing. I guess at this point I'll just have to brew more beer and find people to drink it.

Cheers.

I met Gloria Steinem - Hot Damn

Gloria Steinem came to campus today thanks to the campus groups Women in Communications and ED2010. I'm a member of ED2010, a magazine networking group, and got to attend a reception complete with cheese cubes and cookies, and Gloria. She was really cool and we talked briefly about the role of men and ending sexual violence. She also asked me a question about perceived masculinity and the Iraq war that I didn't understand but nodded to anyways.

Feminism aside, there's been a bunch of new beer in my life lately. Last night I drank a leftover from the Sam Adams Winter Pack, Old Fezziwig. Here's my review:

Overall=3.5
This is a nice gentle beer. No big flavors, but still a pleasant and smooth taste. It pours a dark red with tan head. The head goes away, but there's still decent lacing. The aroma is sweet and candy-like with a bit of cocoa. The cocoa carries over into the flavor with mellow caramel malt. Very easy to drink, I always look forward to this one in the Sam Winter Sampler. Salud.

I also recently entered the rest of my Mexican beer reviews into beeradvocate.com. Out of the seven, I liked Bohemia the best and Estrella the worst. The take home lesson here was really that tequila is the way to go in Mexico.

Session Brown Update

I couldn't wait any longer and checked out my new, 1 week-old brown ale. It looks like it fermented fairly cold at 60 F, but turned out fine thanks to the German ale yeast made for colder temps. I pulled a sample that gave a gravity reading of 1.011, that puts it at about 4.1% abv. That puts it next to light beer in terms of alcohol.

The flavor really knocked my socks off for being such a small beer. It reminded me of a couple good beers I've tried, Ithaca Beer Co.'s Nut Brown and Dogfish Head's Chicory Stout. It tastes of dark grains, slightly sweet with black licorice and cocoa powder.

This could be ready for consumption in as little as 2 weeks if I can get the cherry stout or graduation beer bottled to open up a conditioner. The problem is I don't have much time, or many spare bottles to take care of either. I took a case of dusty and dirty 16 oz returnables my friend Carly donated into the basement to sit with a little bleach. Hopefully, there'll be some progress by the end of the week.

More Cancun

Today's been spent on the beach, burning, drinking, reading, and swimming. We're about to head into town for Yucetan food, whatever that is. And i'm still sticky from the salt water. All in all, not a bad deal.

Last night was something to talk about though. Me and Christine finally went to a club. We figured that if we were going to one, we'd at least go to the most stereotypical and ended up at Senior Frog's.

Let me just say that I had heard about the awkwardness of middle aged folks hitting clubs with the Spring Break crowds before, but I was still amazed by it. I looked to my left and there was a girl hanging upside down, attempted to hold up her skirt and take a shot, while to my left an grey-haired couple got their groove on atop the bar. Throw in a cougar sucking face, I stress the suckin, with a young guy and so drunk she almost puts the wrong end of a cigarette in her mouth, a girl that should be naked getting naked, and creepy 30-some guys just standing in the middle of dance floor, it made for the best people watching I've had in years. Totally worth the cover.

I should also mention my favorite booze-related part at Senior Frog's, a self-service gas pump that dispensed beer. Yeah it only has Dos Equis Premium, but the thought was there.

Cancun Update #2

Hokay. I got a US-keyboard this time but Blogger loaded in Spanish, fun fun. Anyways, the weather is great and all is good. We visited Chichen Itza today and it's almost dinner time and I still havent had anything to drink. It happens.

Yesterday we hung around the Hotel Zone, picked up a few things and laid on the beach twice. One of the fun parts of Cancun is that I've yet to see an open-container law enforced. Yes, they do have them here, but I've typically had a beer while shopping or people watching. I kind of expected this from what I'd heard, but was still surprised to see people taking their margaritas onto the public buses.

I should also mention that while most of the tourist are pretty cool. I've seen a couple ugly American stereotypes. On the second night, there were a couple drunks heading to Wal-Mart for a stereo. They wanted to throw a room party and were tell everyone they could. One local seemed to be pretty amused until the drunk (from MN I unfortunately admit) started talking about taking her back to his room. While she seemed quite nice, 30-40-something moms aren't my cup of tea. Different strokes for different folks, and drunks.

Spring Break: Cancun Pt. 1

Keyboards in Mexico are almost the same as ours, but not and its getting annoying. That being said I´m in Cancun for spring break and I have no real complaints. We got in Saturday night and ate by the beach. Yesterday we laid on the beach and ate (and I drank). Today should be more of the same.

For anyone wondering, the beaches really are almost white and the water is really really blue. Our room looks over the water and a dock that houses boats used for evening booze cruises. Occaisonally in the evening we´ll see one of these boat floating by with a strobe light and some god awful song blasting. Any other place, this might bother me, but I´m in Cancun and don´t care.

I´ve had the chance to try a few of the beers here so far and I think I´ll do ok without my usually craft beer. Yes, I tried Corona (compliments of the hotel) and it was bad but not horrible. I also went through a large bottle of a Vienna Lager styled beer called Victoria. You can read my reviews of Corona here and Victoria here.

Work and Play

While I was able to brew up a batch of beer yesterday, one thing I failed to do was get caught up on my editing for Esquire.com. I got five stories back from the site's editor, Eric Gillin, about two weeks ago. Since then I've kind of sucked it up at getting them back to him.

One problem was the day I got them back was the same day I was given an edit test for Men's Health magazine. Right there I suddenly dropped everything I was doing for four days in the hopes of a post-grad job. It at least looks like I might be an internship out of the test, but damn it was a lot of work.

I will say it's a little easier to write and edit Esquire.com stuff now that their site is up and running. At first I really had no fucking clue what exactly was going on. But now I'm heading out to Spring Break in Cancun (yes, poor me) and I've only gotten two of the five stories back to Eric, with the other three in progress. Poop.

New Brew Rising

Aside from driving my sister to the airport at 5 AM, this Friday was pretty relaxed. I woke up and drove to the homebrewing store with the idea that I'd brew a batch the sunday before class starts again. Well, I got home, set the bag of crushed barley down, and it smelled so good I just couldn't resist. Now the beer is happily sitting in the fermentor just starting to bubble.

It's supposed to be a low-alcohol brown ale. It's loosely based on an English dark mild, but is a little darker, heavier, and without the British yeast. It's also got some German influences as I used a single-decoction mash to bring out the malt flavor, plus Wyeast's German Ale yeast.

Here's the recipe:
4# Pale malt
2.5# Biscuit malt
1# 120L Crystal malt
1/4# Chocolate malt
1/4# British wheat

Mashed at 152 F
Decocted about a gallon for 15 min.

1/2 oz. Cascade hops @ 60min
1/2 oz. Cascade hops @ 15 min

Pitched 125mL of Wyeast German Ale Yeast


The starting gravity came out at about 1.044, which means this beer should turn out at 4.1-4.4% abv. In a week I'll rack to secondary and bottle the cherry stout that currently hanging out. Hopefully this one won't need much time before it's ready. I'm getting anxious.

Posting and Purpose

The basic premise of this blog's inception is as a project for a class, IST 195. I plan on using this to post about what I'm doing in relation to beer, bikes, and writing, the three main pillars of my life. I hope you enjoy.

I'll start with an introduction. I'm Matt Allyn, a senior in magazine journalism at Syracuse University. I'm currently spending my last months of college doing everything I can to find a job so I don't end up in a van down by the river.

Some basics about me are that I write for Esquire.com, Draft Magazine, The Daily Orange, and Jerk Magazine (where I'm also the opinions editor). I've been into endurance sports for about nine years, starting with running, the nordic skiing, and now biking. As we're finally transitioning to spring I'll be on my bikes, a new Trek 8500 and vintage Raleigh Team, more and more. And all the while, I should be drinking and reviewing copious amounts of beer.

The latest beer I drank and reviewed was Aventinus Weizenbock. You can read my article in the Daily Orange here, or get the quick one on BeerAdvocate here.

Cheers.