Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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Lagunitas Sucks Holiday Ale

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lagunitas
No, that’s not a judgment call on my part. I love Lagunitas. But that is the name of their new seasonal ale for 2011; Lagunitas Sucks Holiday Ale. They’re calling it that because the new beer is a temporary replacement for their popular — and usual holiday seasonal — Brown Shugga’, which they won’t be able to brew this year due to the installation of their new 250-barrel brewhouse.

From the press release:

It is a sad day at Lagunitas when we have to tell you that our favorite seasonal — Brown Shugga — will take a year off and come back in full force in the fall of 2012 after the installation of our new brewhouse.

A brand new beer that’s sure to please is our “Lagunitas Sucks Holiday Ale”….. it’s our BrownShugga’ substitute.

This beer is a Dry-Hopped ‘Cereal Medley’ of Barley, Rye, Wheat, and Oats…. full of complexishness from the 4 grains, and weighing in at 7.6% abv, it is mondo-dry-hopped for that big aroma and resinous hop flavor.

The entire project has a self-deprecating air about it, including the label notes, which are always written by Lagunitas founder Tony Magee. To wit:

This sad holiday season we didn’t have the brewing capacity to make our favorite seasonal brew, the widely feared BrownShugga’ Ale. You see, we had a couple of good years (thank you very much) and so heading into this season while we are awaiting a January delivery of a new brewhouse we are jammin’ along brewing 80 barrels of IPA and PILS and such every 3 hours. A couple of months back we realized that since we can only brew a mere 60 barrels of Shugga every 5 hours, that we were seriously screwed. For every case of Shugga’ brewed, we’d short 3 cases of our daily brews. The new brewhouse will help insure that this kind of failure never happens again. It’s a mess that we can not brew our BrownShugga’ this year and we suck for not doing it. There is nothing cool about screwing up this badly and we know it. Maybe we can sue our sorry selves. There is no joy in our hearts this holiday and the best we can hope for is a quick and merciful end. F*@& us. This totally blows. Whatever. We freaking munch moldy donkey butt and we just want it all to be over ….

My guess is that the new Lagunitas Suck Holiday Ale will be so good that we’ll all forgive them and Santa will not bring them all a lump of coal this Christmas. They do seem to be appealing to Santa’s better nature but putting a yummy-looking Santa cookie on the label. Perhaps they’ll leave some of them out on Christmas Eve so when Santa comes down the brewhouse chimney, he can eat himself.

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Beer In Art #143: Adriaen Brouwer’s In The Tavern

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This week’s work of art is by the Flemish artist Adriaen Brouwer, who was a part of the Baroque movement and lived from 1605-1638. He was especially known for his genre works and painted scenes of everyday life, which were very popular during his lifetime. According to Wikipedia; “Tradition has it that Brouwer himself spent much time in the alehouses of Flanders and Holland. His works are typically detailed and small, and often adopt themes of debauchery, drunkenness and foolishness in order to explore human emotions, expressions and responses to pain, fear and the senses.” One well known painting of Brouwer’s, In the Tavern, done in the last year of his life, 1638.

brouwer-in-the-tavern

Referred to by one art critic as “a particularly picturesque scene,” he describes the painting:

Adriaen Brower has portrayed a group of individuals seated at a table. An innkeeper is serving them. The style is remarkably direct. The figures are in various positions, notably the figure in the middle who is raising his glass of beer with gusto. The artist has paid careful attention to his details: the remains of a meal on the table; the knife sticking out of the belt of the figure with his back to the viewer; and the carefully executed jug in the foreground.

While I like it, I think my favorite is one that’s known by various titles: The Bitter Drunk, the Bitter Draught, the Bitter Tonic, and the Bitter Potion. Painted in 1635, some accounts say it depicts a man having just taken some disagreeable medicine, while based on the titles, others believe simply strong, bitter beer. But I just love the expression on his face. Who among us hasn’t seen a bad drunk with that expression?

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Yet another is known as Seated Drinkers, though its date is uncertain.

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Another is Peasants Smoking and Drinking, painted in 1635.

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And finally, Village Scene with Men Drinking, painted between 1631-35.

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You can read more about Brouwer at his Wikipedia page and his biography at the Web Gallery. There’s another biography at Art Table, and also a small gallery of more of his work. You can see yet more of Brouwer’s paintings at the Web Gallery of Art, Olga’s Gallery, Wikimedia and ArtCyclopedia.

Oxford Companion To Beer Published Today

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While it’s actually been available for purchase for a few weeks already, today is the “official” publication date of The Oxford Companion to Beer, the new encyclopedic reference book on all things beer. It was put together by my friend and colleague, Garrett Oliver, who’s the brewmaster at Brooklyn Brewery in in New York, and the author of the seminal beer and food book, The Brewmaster’s Table.

The actual authors include something like 166 beer writers, brewers, suppliers, brewing scientists and researchers; experts in their fields one and all. In the interest of full disclosure, I was one of the contributors, too, and wrote around 25 of the 1,100 entries in the 900-page book. As a result, I don’t think it’s fair for me to review it, though I must say it’s getting fairly good press already, including a rave by the New York Times’ Eric Asimov, who called it the “ultimate beer guide.”

Published by the Oxford University Press (OUP), it’s already one of their most successful reference books. Perhaps the best evidence that the world was waiting for a book like this is the fact that it sold out, twice, before today’s official publication date. According to the OUP — who considers a reference book a success if it sells a few thousand copies — they sold out of the initial 10,000 print run from pre-orders, printed another 5,000 which also immediately sold out, and are now on the third printing, all before today’s publication date.

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Associate Editor Horst Dornbusch and Editor-in-Chief Garret Oliver at a reception for the book’s launch during GABF week in Denver.

During GABF, OUP had a nice reception for all of the authors who were attending the beer festival this year, and so there were quite a few of us there to see the book for the first time and try the new wheat wine, named Companion, that was a collaboration between Garret and Horst brewed at the Brooklyn Brewery. Apparently it will only be available if you purchase the boxed set of the new book, which comes with a bottle of the beer and the book, a companion to the companion.

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Beer In Ads #449: Say O’K For O’Keefe’s

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Thursday’s ad is again from 1955, and is for another Canadian beer, this time O’Keefe’s Extra Old Stock Ale. The ad seems a little bit busy to me, with too much going on. Besides the sepia tone-like maple syrup farm background, there’s the floating label, below the “A Canadian Favourite” tagline, and the cartoon syrup farmer in the bottom right-hand corner. Then the bottom slogan, “Say O’K for O’Keefe’s.”

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Beer In Ads #448: Victory Isn’t Always To The Strong

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Wednesday’s ad is also from 1955, and is for the Canadian beer, Molson Golden Ale. Their anthropomorphized mascot, — “Goldie” — a man with the head of a lion, says modestly that “Victory isn’t always to the strong.” Based on his expression, and the happy-looking woman next to him, I’d say he’s getting beat pretty bad at bowling.

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Beer Week Explosion

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Out at GABF last week, I heard about a few beer weeks that were new to me. As I’ve been tracking them for some time now, that surprised me. When I first put together a list a couple of years ago, there were a couple dozen. By the time I wrote the entry for beer weeks in the Oxford Companion to Beer, there were around forty. Before I left for GABF, my list included around 55. After hearing about those new ones, I decided to do some more digging and my list now includes 78 beer weeks around the world. Of those, six seem to have been held once or aren’t continuing and three more are “unofficial,” but have all the elements of a beer week (CBC Week, OBF Week and GABF Week). That still leaves 69 ongoing beer weeks, plus I also found eight more that have been announced, have Twitter feeds or Facebook pages but have not set a precise date yet. So that takes the total back up to 77 beer weeks. Of those 77, 68 are in the U.S. and 9 are outside America; in Canada, Australia, Germany and the UK. Fold back in the 3 “unofficial” ones and we’re at 79, meaning it will take over one and a half years to go to every beer week. Now that’s a lot of beer weeks. If you want to see my list of beer weeks, click here.

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