November 24, 2009
Posted by Maggie Hoffman, November 23, 2009 at 3:15 PM
[Photographs: Maggie Hoffman]
Last week, we recommended eight great beers to serve with your Thanksgiving feast. But the beer pairing doesn't have to end when you bring out dessert. Beer is actually great with pie, and pie is even better with a well-chosen beer.
Some beers mirror the cinnamon and nutmeg in your dessert, while others bring out the caramel and nut flavors. Some are richer than espresso and cream, some are buttery, and others are refreshing enough to make dessert feel light.
Look for styles that aren't very hoppy, and serve in a wide-mouthed wine glass.
Thanksgiving is the perfect opportunity to open a bottle of something special. Look for styles that aren't very hoppy, and serve in a wide-mouthed wine glass, snifter, or tulip so you can really experience the scent and savor a few sips slowly.
Most of these beers are intense: you probably couldn't drink a whole pint. Be sure to serve them around 50 to 55°F—any colder, and you'll taste mostly alcohol and carbonation, rather than the rich, warming flavors that blossom at the proper temperature.
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Posted by Maggie Hoffman, November 19, 2009 at 1:45 PM
"Malty beer resonates with the caramelized skin of a turkey and brings out the herbal flavors in stuffing."
[Photograph: Maggie Hoffman]
If you want to eat like the Pilgrims this Thanksgiving, you should probably get busy hunting for deer and wild ducks. But if you want to drink Pilgrim-style, you just need to get yourself some beer!
The colonists believed that beer was usually safer to drink than water and worried about drinking their barrels dry. After dithering too long over where to locate their settlement, the passengers of the Mayflower finally chose Plymouth just before a harsh winter began. William Bradford wrote, "We could not now take much time for further search [for an ideal destination,] our victuals being much spent, especially our beer." They urged the next boat of Separatists headed toward Plymouth to bring about 10,000 gallons of ale and some malt for homebrewing.
Historical accuracy aside, beer works with Thanksgiving food. Malty beer resonates with the caramelized skin of a turkey and brings out the herbal flavors in stuffing. Beer's carbonation and bitterness cleanses and refreshes the palate between bites.
But not just any beer will play nice with classic Thanksgiving dishes. Hoppy IPAs (and other beers on the bitter end of the scale) are out of sync with the sweet and earthy flavors of the Thanksgiving feast. But a wide variety of styles pair beautifully with turkey, stuffing, and even sweet potatoes. We tasted 20 bottles of beer (over the course of three nights) with many plates of Thanksgiving food and came up with these eight stellar pairings to be thankful for.
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Posted by Maggie Hoffman, November 12, 2009 at 10:00 AM
Fresh hops awaiting harvest. [Photograph: Deschutes Brewery]
As Serious Eaters, you probably use a lot of fresh herbs in your cooking. Dried basil just doesn't have the aromatic sweetness of fresh basil. But have you considered whether there are dried or fresh hops are in your beer?
Hop flowers provide the bitter backbone that makes beer taste the way it does. Some varieties of hops add a fruity citrus taste, while others give off a juniper-like scent. Most of the time, brewers use dried, compressed hop pellets to do the job.
But once a year when hops are ready to be pulled from the vine, some brewers celebrate the season by heading out to local farms to harvest hops fresh. Once gathered, the hops need to be added to the brewing kettle as quickly as possible—the delicate flowers spoil rapidly, especially if exposed to heat.
Pouring in the hops. [Photograph: Deschutes Brewery]
How do these fresh-hopped beers taste? Pretty delicious. The fresh hops provide a uniquely refreshing, subtle herbal quality to these beers, and you know you're getting something brewed recently if they're using wet hops from this year's harvest. But like any fresh seasonal produce, these beers won't be on the shelves forever—you should grab some while you can!
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Posted by Maggie Hoffman, November 5, 2009 at 10:30 AM
[Photograph: Maggie Hoffman]
I'm just going to be honest with you: I think it may be time to forget Oktoberfest (if you haven't already.) Märzenbier is tasty stuff, but I've decided that American rye beers are really the perfect autumn brew.
By substituting rye for some of the barley in the mash, brewmasters give these beers a hint of spicy warmth and a touch of rye-bread flavor. Though the Germans have used rye in their pumpernickel-brown roggenbier since medieval times, the ryes we tasted were distinctly American. There's no hard and fast rule as to what an American rye must be, but these tended toward reddish amber, fruity, and generously hopped. They're a little spicy, with a sour kick and a smooth caramel flavor. Some of them are brash, bold beers—but we couldn't help but love them.
If you notice an American rye on tap at your local watering hole, give it a try! Some great rye beers (such as Sixpoint's Righteous Ale) aren't available in bottles.
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Posted by Maggie Hoffman, October 29, 2009 at 11:15 AM
[Photographs: Maggie Hoffman]
Last week, we enjoyed some malty brown ales from England. But those beers didn't really prepare us for the brown ales produced by American craft breweries. While some of these beers take after their British forefathers, others diverge widely from the classic style.
We tried bright, hoppy brown ales and sweet, pruney brown ales; rich, heavy brown ales and dry, lighter ones; reddish brown ales and blackish ones. Often, the bottles gave no clue as to what style was inside. We tasted ten different beers to give you the scoop.
While one brown ale stood out as a clear favorite among all our tasters, we hope you'll look more closely at the descriptions than the stars this week. Are you looking for a warming, chocolately beer to sip on a rainy night? Or something with a bitter kick to see you through the World Series? We've split the brown ales into two categories, with separate rankings for each.
Don't buy a six-pack until you've checked out the tasting notes after the jump.
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