05/13/08

Great Scott?

My evil plan is working.

Writing about beer means that globe-trotting friends now feel compelled to lug choice brews—beady-eyed customs officials and baggage weight limits be damned—across land and sea to satisfy my beer tooth. Insert devilish cackle here.

My pal Venus spent the last nine months in Paris eating pastries and writing a dissertation on French agricultural history. I spent the last nine months trying not to kill the plants she left behind. When she returned last week, she came bearing beer as a thank-you. But not just any beer. The one that got away: Adelscott...

Posted at 04:05 PM in Get to the Pint | Permalink | Comments (1)

04/28/08

The Dark Side

The early bird gets the beer. Me, I got a sip.

Saturday was Dark Lord Day, the annual release of Three Floyds' Dark Lord, a Russian-style imperial stout that's earned a cult-like following for its rarity as well as its ability, at 13 percent alcohol, to show casual drinkers the floor. When I visited the brewery in December, our tour guide talked the event up big. People come from Japan, he said. People camp out just to be sure they get their rationed six bottles before the near-mythic brew sells out. Hm, I thought. People travel from Japan to Munster, Indiana, for beer? OK, sure...

Posted at 03:46 PM in Get to the Pint | Permalink | Comments (5)

04/21/08

That Wheach Doesn’t Kill Us

Turns out you can judge a beer by its six-pack. Meet Wheach, the "peach wheat beer" from Missouri's O'Fallon Brewery that comes in a big yellow carton with its very own mascot. No, that's not Pac-Man. It's a peach.

In honor of four consecutive days of yes-god-there-is-a-spring weather, I went looking for the sunniest beer I could find—and I defy anyone to top this baby, a spiked popsicle of a sipper just released on April 1st ($11.99 at Vas Foremost, 2300 N. Milwaukee Ave.)...

Posted at 02:11 PM in Get to the Pint | Permalink | Comments (1)

04/10/08

For Whom the Bell Tolls

My very first beer was a Heineken from a vending machine in a cheap Amsterdam hostel. At the time, I thought the bitter, swill-like flavor was exacerbated by the sweetness of some dried pineapple I was eating alongside it. Turns out that's just Heineken. But a few weeks later, I had my first sips of something truly inspiring, Brasserie Fischer's Adelscott, a complex lager brewed with a secret weapon: peat-smoked malt whiskey. Now that was a beer.

That's not to say I know much about beer—but I'm learning, and I'll be chronicling it here, in a new weekly Web feature called Get to the Pint...

Posted at 01:43 PM in Get to the Pint | Permalink | Comments (2)