There’s something about food made with local ingredients. If you’ve ever seen an episode of Gordon Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares (on BBC America, much better than U.S. version!), you know what advice he seems to give almost every under-performing restaurant. Other than telling them not to serve raw food which might kill the few customers they have, he always tells them to add dishes to the menu with local ingredients. Amazingly, it usually seems to do the trick. Hell, whenever I’m outside of the Garden State and there’s beer involved, the first thing I usually look for is something local that I usually can’t get back home.
So, if localism is a key to success, then Sierra Nevada should be selling plenty of Chico Estate Harvest Ale because it really is”fresh from the field to the glass with no stops along the way.”
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Seattle’s Baron Brewing Company is releasing two new 22 oz bottles from the Baron Brewing beer lineup and another in their Brothers Grimm Series.
Baron Rauchbier
The Baron Rauchbier is a German style smoked beer that is most commonly found in Bamberg. 90% of the malt is smoked with Beechwood. A pleasant, mellow sweetness from the malt counter-balances the campfire smokiness. Aroma emits a blast of smoke headed off by malt and a subtle hop finish. All ingredients for the beer are imported from Germany and it’s brewed in accordance to the German Beer Purity Law A very unique beer that is an example of an old style. (ABV: 5% / IBU: 26)
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Boston’s Harpoon Brewery will being introducing the Harpoon Leviathan Series, a limited edition line of specialty beers. The Leviathan Series is an exploration in brewing big beers for adventurous palates.
First up in the series is, Leviathan Triticus. Latin for “wheat,” Triticus is a strong and dark wheat wine-style ale that boasts 14.3% alcohol-by-volume (yummy!). The blend of 50% wheat malts, including caramel and chocolate, provides color and depth of flavor. Complex hopping and dry-hopping lends a delicate spiciness and just enough balance to complement its strength. Once brewed, the Triticus was transferred to 50-gallon bourbon barrels and aged at the brewery for over 2 months.
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Back in April, Miller Lite announced that they’d be rolling out their new “Brewers Collection” nationwide by September. While I do have some misgivings about the idea of buying a beer from a megabrewer that’s seemingly being marketed purely to ride the coattails of the growing popularity of actual craft beer, I was actually looking forward to seeing if they could pull it off. The Lite wheat, amber and blonde ale styles were set to be marketed as “Craft Beer. Done Lite.” with a mere 110 calories per 12-ounce serving. (That’s music to the ears of a guy who swears he’s getting a little pudgier around the tummy in his 30’s!)
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Saint Arnold Brewing Company, the oldest craft brewery in Texas, is introducing their latest edition of craft beer styles, Saint Arnold Divine Reserve No. 6. If you want it, get moving because Saint Arnold Divine Reserve is brewed in very limited quantities and reportedly sells out at most locations in a day or two.
Saint Arnold Divine Reserve No. 6 is an American Barleywine, which is among the strongest of the beer styles. Although the barleywine style originated more than 100 years ago, San Francisco’s Anchor Brewing is widely credited with popularizing the American Barleywine style when it released Old Foghorn in 1975.
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