Beerbrotha Sports Review: NCAA WKU vs MVSU. More Brown than Black

Oh Lord Jesus!

When I sat down to write about an in depth post about some grand personal beer experiences I had a year ago in Saint Louis. I'm talking careers and counselors and money and martial arts and tears and empty apartments and drunken weekdays and smokey rooms and.... But we'll save that for later.

While I'm here, I figure I'll go ahead and fire up the Mississippi Valley State play-in game. I'm brimming with Black College pride as MVSU from the SWAC is destroying the Toppers from Western Kentucky. They put my school FAMU in this jacked up play-in game a few years back and I'm glad we won. Every year we get a Black School in the Play-in and all of us Black College Alums gather up our pride to root on our brethren.

As I sit here there are only 2:15 minutes left in the game and things have gone to hell in a hand basket. The Delta Devils are falling apart like a house of cards in the last 5 minutes. And add to that, THE FIRST BLACK PRESIDENT IS IN THE DAMN CROWD! This is a mess.

The wife is getting a beer for me to review in a minute, but while I'm here, let's rant a bit about the status of Black College Sports....

Is it not true that you only need like 3 good players to have a DECENT team. Is it not true that 98% of the best basketball players in the country Black? Is it not true that teams with hardly any gym at all is fielding decent teams (say Fordham). How is it that WE are the BOTTOM of the BARREL every damn year in Black College Basketball. It's not like football where you have to have castle-like field houses, epic stadiums, whores posing as co-eds, and 40,000 member booster clubs. It's just basketball.

Ok here we go, 40 seconds left and WKU gets the shot and the foul. If you are going to foul, take his KNEECAPS out. This is so much fail right now.

If you asked me 5 years ago what would we have first, an HBCU that was a 10 seed in the NCAA's or a Black President? I mean come on. And the game is OVER! And the President is leaving the game! Damn damn shame.

Beer Log: Right now

Beer State: Watching Real Time with the wife and pissed off

More Brown than Black IPA by Stone/Ninkasi/Alchemist

I can get a whiff of those hops a full 3 feet away from me. I can see the deep brown beer has a very very lacy tan head. The beer has a very strong pine and grapefruit and grassy hop nose. Barely any hops fitting in there. This beer is incredibly good and balanced. The hops are as strong as the nose, but it works well with the darker roasty malts. I'm getting what would likely normally be strong roast, coffee, and caramel with a pinch of toast, but those hops are just killer. The beauty is that this beer is nice and dry enough that you can drink a lot of it. The ABV is 7.4% which is a bit high for session beering, but damn it works for me. As one's tongue gets used to impact (no homo), it gets to be like a beer cookie thing. I wouldn't be surprised if they snuck a few oats in there as well. You know what, give me 4 stars, a high 4 stars.

Feel free to read here about the story of this beer.

Beering in San Francisco: 21st Amendment

Finally getting to blogging about this trip. Earlier this month the family went up to San Francisco. The wife had a huge conference she was attending and my Mother-In-Law took the baby off my hands, so most of the day I was free to take long runs around the city and have beer up to my eyeballs. So the first day we get there and I am just awestruck at how much a fricken cab costs to get us to downtown from the airport. After the sticker shock, we check in, get cleaned up and IT'S BOSS TIME!!!

The first order of business is to get the wife registered for her conference and it was lunch time. I figure that this being San Fran, that we could walk into any decent restaurant and get some good local beer to start us off. We walk across the street from the hotel to Annabelle's. This nice restaurant that we felt a little out of place with considering we had a rambunctious 3-year old. But seeing as how the price is right, I didn't think we had anything to worry about. AB's has a very nice selection of area beer, about 10 in total if I recall. I'm kinda hot so why not start 'em up with a...

Beer Log: November 2, 2010
State: At Annabelle's in San Francisco. Pretty hot after all the walking, and eating some decent BBQ pork. Taking notes on my wife's ipad. What now son!

Trumer Pils
Big hoppy flower character with nice pilsner malt. Brilliantly clear straw color... Maybe it's just b/c this is the first beer I've had all day after the plane ride, but I like it. It's a slightly softer character to this one than I'm used to for a pilsner. Must have higher chlorides. Very quaffable and soft on the MT. 3.5 stars.

After the BBQ swine showed up, it was time for the next one

Speakeasy Prohibition Ale
Dark amber color, thin reddish-white head. Noseis very hoppy with caramel trying to come out. Nice hop malt balance. Nottoostrong at all, great for multiples. Nice caramel malt and a little to sweet. St. Actually nice crisp finish. Head has some lace. For some reason get a little wateriness somewhere in the middle of the palate. I like the cookie feeling as well. Good beer at three and a half stars...

After we took leave of the in-laws and the kid, the wife, a good friend ours, and I fired up the Android to find our way to the 21st Amendment. I am a HUGE fan of the Brewing Network and have been listening on podcast for years. I'm almost caught up on the archives. I listen to the BN so much that it has probably messed up my professional career as I stopped listening to NPR, Manager Tools, Oil and Gas Journal and so forth. I'll be so happy when I catch up on the archives so I can get it going professionally again. Regardless, I just had to make it to the 2-1-A as soon as possible. So we dragass to 563 Second Street (right across from AT&T park) to get us some.

Beer Log: That same afternoon after Annabelle's
State: A little warm after hoofing for a half mile or so, but enjoyed the joyful walk

21st Amendment Brewery and Restaurant .
So we go in there and it is VERY VERY Spacious. Lots of wood, elbow room, extremely high ceilings. They must pay a GRIP to keep the lease on this place. It's the middle of the afternoon on a workday, so the place was pretty empty. The thick white woman was working the bar as well as the tables. So my future babymomma eerrrr waitress gave us the beer list and it was nice. A good handful of the 21A beers with a few special collection bottles you can get in the back. No watermelon wheat, so I had to live with...

Via

Kinda yeast and sweet on the nose, kinda funky. Clear beer, kinda plain. Reminds me of my home-brewed beg wit. Very smooth single, light and perfect for the summer slamming save the 6% abv. Decent carbo, though a little empty to me in the middle. Low 3 stars. Beer is getting worse as it warms. Take that to two stars

Noir de blanc

Very cloudy brown beer. Get some sweetness and esters on the nose, though it's the wife's beer and it's been sitting there for a while. Kinda reminds me of the stuff I had at Draught House I had in Austin. Very soft, mod carbo, and some big ester yeast flavor. Moderate malt flavor. Great mix of dark bock and wheat. Still a little weak for my taste, but I can see his one being a moneymaker for the pub. Low 3 stars.

Back in Black

Blackish brown with a thin white head and serious flowery hops, very cascade. Now we're talking. Harsh bit in hops with an actual soft finish. AT has hints of chocolate and roast notes. Adds to the bitterness. I like how this thing works together. Just what I expected from a west coast beer. Come on with it baby. High 3 stars for now. Will probably come back later to check it out. (Actually I never came back, but this Cascadian Dark was absolutely awesome).

The beering was not exactly what I expected at first, but not bad either.

Hold up:

Beer Log: Right now

State: Still got some of that sour Beer de Goord taste in my mouth, save us IPA

Sam Adams Latitude 48 IPA

Very clean grass/flower nose on a brilliantly clear amber looking beer. Somewhat sticky white head to boot (no homo). A good mix of pilsner bread and hard cascade-like yet complex hops. Not sure where the 48th latitude is, hold up: ok that's pretty cool. it's all hops on the 48th latitude. German, english, american hops. I can get the german noble funky hops and the harsh american. The English hops are there if I let the power of suggestion take over me, but who knows. It's more like the malt is very english like, kind of like the malt on an Elissa IPA from Saint Arnold, very earthy and smooth. High 3 Stars for this complex IPA from SA. Nice.

So the 2-1-A is a great place for some good beering. I didn't get to try any food, but I know I would be spending significant time there if I lived in San fran. Especially on gameday.

Back Home: Sorta... Purity!!!

Well, I made it off the platform and have decided to stop in Lafayette while letting the Tropical Storm make its way north of I-10. No sense in driving in this mess if I don't have to. A little Googling reveals a chain of restaurants called Zea Rotisserie and Grill. Turns out they get their beer brewed out of the Heiner Brau brewery. It's not exactly a brewpub, but it's close e-damn-nough. I have some time before I'm going to see my cousin who works out of Lafayette, so I make my way to Zea.

The decor is nice, and it feels great getting out of the heat. The menu has four microbrewed beers available with suggestions for food pairings. I would like to take their advice, but screw that, I make up my own pairing lunch.

Zea Amber Lager

State: starving, haven't had a beer in over 2 weeks, ordered Hummus with Pita bread.

I figured hummus would go well with the amber lager, and I loved it. It could have been that I hadn't had a drink in over 2 weeks, but the beer was great. It served as an excellent foil with hummus, in that both the food and the beer tasted like the first bite/sip throughout the whole experience. They brought it out in a bottle with a frosted pilsner glass. It has a nice bready malt scent with a little caramel in there, almost syrupy when the head vanishes. Brown/red in color and clear. Light malt taste, medium body, and medium bready taste on the aftertaste. Low carbonation (excellent) yet I'll say moderately drinkable. The hummus is excellent. I was thinking this stuff tastes like purity law beer , and sure enough it is. Very well done. High 3 stars. It's the next day and I still want this one again.

When I say purity law, I am referring to the German law that beer can only have barely, yeast, water, and hops. Beer brewed in this style is typically very clean, very crisp, and very good pure beer. As much as I like the creativity of guys like Dogfish, Sam Adams, etc, there is something to be said for a brewery that puts all its energy in the four basic ingredients. It's great craft beer without the cloves, cinnamon sticks, raissonettes, rice, cane, ubu, watermelon, blood, chicken feathers, wine, candy sugar etc.

Category 5 American Pale Ale

The aptly named Pale Ale was something I was looking forward to since walking in. I order this with one of the signature Rotisserie chicken dishes (that says spicy on the menu). Another bottle with a frosted pilsner glass. Low head with my vigorous pour. Similar color as the last beer. There is a light maltiness on the nose (hmm no hops). I can taste the Cascade bite hops late, but it's kinda unbalanced. A little icky on the aftertaste as well. I don't know if they should have used Cascade by itself. The Rotis Chicken has arrived. The beer tastes a little better and balanced as it warms up a bit (figures). Near the end it got much better, but the chicken wasn't all the spicy, though very very good. Probably Munich specialty malt, which is what I think the other one had in it. It's basically like the amber lager, but with Cascade. At 45 degrees, it's a 3 star. At bone chilling cold, they can keep it.

The waitress convinced me to get the bread pudding for desert, and I ordered their...

Pontchartrain Porter

Another frosted glass. Not much of a smell, but I did notice that inside of the glass was COATED with bubbles. Means they did not rinse this glass thoroughly, and the soap residue probably killed the head on this one. It's dark brown and tastes like a dark Munich malt with low hops. Not much of a compliment to the bread pudding, which was very sweet. In fact, it was a bad idea to order any desert with this one. I won't give this one a rating just yet, as I had it with the bread pudding, and it just overwhelmed whatever flavor was in the Porter. Lord knows I'll be in Louisiana enough to try it again.

Overall, the place was fantastic. Food was great, beer was pretty good. I'm hope to try it again with some other food, and maybe they'll have some seasonals. Seems like Munich malt is their house specialty malt. Cool beans. I was a little miffed that they kept bringing out frosted glasses, but I can understand the marketing, as it is hot as balls out there, and cold beer is just what the doctor ordered.