Never Mind the Hype: Lakefront's Black Friday Beer

Past, Present, & Future Sessions Here

As I've mentioned before, beer is for drinking, not for fetishizing. But that giddy thrill before you drink it...? It's pretty fun, sometimes even better than the beer. Maybe even often better than the beer. In those moments, the beer hardly matters. The anticipation, the endorphin and adrenaline rushes, the experience... those matter.

A byproduct of the rise of craft beer is that brewers have to compete for consumers. One way to do this is to hype up a beer. Let's call this top-down hype, as opposed to bottom-up hype, which comes from ones' peers (e.g., "you have to try this barrel-aged imperial wit dry-hopped with unicorn tears!"). Scarcity, top-down hyping if nothing else, means that a great many people, or at least a handful of craft beer aficionados, are going to want to try something there isn't a lot of, which is how I found myself standing outside Lakefront Brewing's Milwaukee building at 8am in a fifteen degree wind chill on "Black Friday."

Lakefront, marketing geniuses that they are, released an imperial black IPA--perhaps the most American, or at least 'Merican, beer they could--to get in on this traditional day of shopping madness. I happened to be in Milwaukee to celebrate Thanksgiving with my brother-in-law, who happens to be an ex-employee of Lakefront. Thanks to the magic of the internet, I found out about this event before he did (thanks, Beerpulse!), though to his credit he agreed it was a good idea.

That foolish fellow in the yellow t-shirt at dead center is my other brother-in-law, who now knows to bring a jacket to an 8am beer event. This photo was on the front page of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel website on Black Friday.

Only 1200 bottles were made, with a limit of three per person. Yes, I bought three. In addition, the first 300 people in line got a Black Friday pint glass. My brother-in-law ended up with the last one of those.

As for the Black Friday imperial IPA? I haven't even had it.* It doesn't matter. Black IPA, or whatever you want to call it, isn't my favorite style. What matters is standing out in the cold, walking into a crowded, festive brewery (see below) on a Friday morning, and having a great time with great people. Hype? The beer is besides the point. It usually is.




* Thanks to air travel, I could only bring back two bottles, getting the rest at Christmas. I chose Three Floyds Broo Doo because it's a wet hop ale, it wasn't getting any fresher, and New Glarus Serendipity because it's New Glarus and delicious. Only one of these beers lives up to the hype. Speaking of which, I maintain that if Three Floyds distributed to 20 states instead of 5 there'd be a lot less talk about them about beer circles, and I say this despite liking many of their offerings.

Staying Pretty in DC, or, In Which I Attempt Journalism

At a time when pulling out of markets is the new black (IPA), I’ve got some good news. “Gypsy” brewer Pretty Things, based out of Cambridge, MA and brewed in Westport, MA (for now) is coming to DC via Legends Ltd as early as next week.

I spoke to Erin Tyler at Legends, and a certified cicerone, who reached out to Pretty Things about eight months ago, before withdrawing from territories was all the rage, and to Dann Paquette, Pretty Things’ brewer. The first two beers DC will see are Baby Tree, a Belgian style quad brewed with plumbs, and St. Botolph’s, a rustic brown ale that tastes like Newcastle, if Newcastle was handmade with care rather than by a heartless multinational corporation. By late June (via Legends) or mid-July (via Pretty Things) we’ll see their flagship beer, Jack D’Or, a saison hopped with citra that’s a personal favorite. We won’t see any of their offerings on draft, though, so you’ll have to settle for bombers, the only bottle size that Pretty Things uses.

I first had the pleasure of drinking Pretty Things Jack D’Or at Deep Ellum in Allston, MA in June, 2009 and was immediately hooked. I’ve been bringing their bottles from New York every time I’m up there. In the meantime, Greg Jasur at Pizzeria Paradiso has taken advantage of strange DC regulations that allow retailers and restaurants to self-import, so some Pretty Things’ products are already available at the two DC Pizzeria Paradiso locations.

Nice to know that more good beer will be available down here. DCBeer also has some information on this, and should be the first place you turn to for any and all beer news in DC. Stay pretty, DC beer drinkers.

Beer! A Salute to Harpoon's 100 Barrel Series

If you've been following craft beer news lately, a few trends stand out. You may have noticed more 22 oz. bottles (sometimes called "bombers") for sale at your local beer shop, and you may have noticed that those bottles tend to contain beer with a higher than average alcohol content, often between 7% to 11% alcohol by volume (ABV), compared to 3% to 5.5% ABV from the larger breweries such as Miller.* The high ABV beers pose something of a problem if you work mornings as 22 oz. of a 9% beer can add up. You could share with a friend or family member, or do what I do: cap the bottle with a stop (wine stops are less effective than plastic ones, but will do in a pinch) and come back to it the next day.
The good folks at Harpoon, however, have come up with something else: good beers in bombers with more manageable ABVs under the 100 Barrel Series. Harpoon, I salute you! In particular, I salute the Single Hop ESB, which features, for the first time in a commercially brewed beer, the Delta hop, a hybrid of the British Fuggle and the American Cascade. For a good example of each of these hops, I suggest Shipyard IPA for the Fuggle and Sierra Nevada's Pale Ale for the Cascade. Crossing the two, at least as expressed in the ESB, it appears that the Fuggle won out, as the mouthfeel is a bit earthy, lacking the citrus tang of Cascade. No shame in that, and not a surprise given that the Cascade is itself a Fuggle crossed with an obscure Russian hop. Clocking in at 5.8% ABV, the ESB comes as close to a session beer as you'll find in a bomber, which means you can drink the whole thing in a sitting and not regret it the next morning. In fact, a great many 100 Barrel Series beers clock in at under 7%.
This bottle happens to be the maltiest beer in my house, so I paired it with bratwurst and braised cabbage, treating it like a Marzen. It worked quite nicely. Well done, Harpoon!

* Some may point out that Heineken and malt liquors have come in bombers for some time, but I'm not talking about those, at least not now.