It’s the second of our recordings from the weekend that belonged to Darkness Day. Again, this meet-up presented an opportunity for Jason, Mike and Shawn to record together. On this occasion, the three hosts and guests discuss Darkness Day as well as review three different beers.
Our first review is of the beer Rosé De Gambrinus, a Fruit Lambic from Brasserie Cantillon of Anderlecht, Belgium. While these beers can be aged for up to 10 years, they were chosen by the brewmaster as ready to drink now. This style beer is a Gueuze with fruit added during fermentation, and in this case raspberries are used.
Our second beer is the Fifteen Anniversary Ale from Avery Brewing Company of Boulder, Colorado. The Anniversary Ales from Avery are typically “wild and weird”. These are one-off beers that are meant to be aged.
Our third beer is 2010 iteration of the infamous Darkness from Surly Brewing Company of Brooklyn Center, Minnesota. For the past few years, this beer has been primarily for sale on the brewery premises during Darkness Day. Spoiler Alert. This is a tremendous beer that’s ready to drink now.
I can’t remember where I saw this beer styles chart floating around on the internet, since I originally saw it posted on imgur.com. I found it very useful when learning to compare beer styles. I am posting it again in order to share it with my friends learning about different sub-styles of beer, and also with the hope that someone can help it to be properly attributed to its creator.
What is your favorite beer style? Currently, mine is a toss-up between gueuze and American wild ale.
This past weekend, many Midwestern craft beer fans descended upon Minnesota. Their destination: Brooklyn Center, where Surly Brewing hosted Darkness Day 2010. This episode was recorded on Darkness Eve, so stay tuned for next week’s episode to hear our discussion about Darkness Day and Surly Darkness 2010. However, the meet-up for Darkness Day weekend provided an opportunity for Jason and Mike to finally record face-to-face with Shawn and guests in St. Paul.
A number of our most recent episodes have focused on Belgian-style beers with much discussion about funky, sour, tart ,wild, spontaneously-fermented beers. This week is no exception as we breakdown no less than three “wild” beers.
Our first beer comes from Upright Brewing Company of Portland, OR – a company that draws much of its inspiration from the creative spirit of upright bass playing jazz legend, Charles Mingus. Known for its farmhouse style ales, Upright created Four, a wheat beer made from a sour mash.
Our second beer hails from the renowned Russian River Brewing Company, in Santa Rosa, CA. Temptation, a blonde ale that has been aged for 15 months in French oak Chardonnay barrels with Saccharomyces and Brettanomyces yeasts, as well as Pediococcus and Lactobaccillus bacteria.
Our third beer is again of Portland, OR origin – Apricot Ale of Cascade Brewing Company. Apricot Ale is an 8.5% ABV Belgian Tripel-style beer which underwent lactic fermentation for 16 months, aged on French oak wine barrels, and rested on apricots for an additional four months. read more…
Replete with tangents about bottle dates and general beer geekery, we present another episode of our Happy Hour series with Mike, Jason, and special guest Brandon. Clocking in at just under one hour, this week’s Happy Hour circles around the reviews of two beers: Schlafly’s (St. Louis Brewery) Bière de Garde, and Oskar Blues’ Gordon. The Bière de Garde is a timely summer seasonal farmhouse-style ale, and we just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to try out a second beer from Oskar Blues. Hear our plea, Oskar Blues: we would love to have your beer distributed in Iowa. Thanks for listening everyone, cheers! read more…
If you’re not on the email list at Flat Earth, Jeff just shared some information regarding special releases for this week. Jeff is a huge Rush fan, and as such, he’s named many of his beers after songs or song references. Rush will be playing at the Minnesota State Fair on August 27th. To commemorate such an event, Jeff is re-releasing some of his Cygnus X-1 porter infusions. He will also be having a special keg tapping of each release around Minneapolis and Saint Paul. Here’s what he shared:
Starting today we will be selling different infused Cygnus X-1 Porter growlers each day at the brewery. Additionally there will be a special keg tapping each evening at select bars in the Twin Cities. The first 10 people getting an infused Cygnus will receive a free Flat Earth pint glass. Here is the schedule of events for the week at the brewery and abroad:
<li><strong>Monday - Xanadu - Orange infused Cygnus @ The Happy Gnome</strong></li>
<li><strong>Tuesday - Big Money - Oak Aged Cygnus @ The Bulldog Lowertown</strong></li>
<li><strong>Wednesday - Hold Your Fire - Fresno Pepper infused Cygnus @ The Muddy Pig</strong></li>
<li><strong>Thursday - Mystic Rhythms - Raspberry infused Cygnus @ The Groveland Tap</strong></li>
<li><strong>Friday - Grand Design - S'more infused Cygnus @Stub & Herb's</strong></li>
