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Beer Review: Southern Tier Warlock

September 10, 2014 · by Oliver Gray

I made a promise to myself last year, after I burped the last of my cinnamon and spice binge into the ether. I swore, to the old gods and the new, to my inner demons and guardian angels, to all the demigods of diet and phantasms of flavor. I vowed and declared and committed not to give in to the siren song of gourd whispering to me on the autumn wind, that this year in beer would prove different.

I made an oath in those dark winter months, in the foggy hangover of post holiday splurge. I signed it with the alcohol in my blood and the sugar on my breath. A contract with one a relatively simple clause: do not drink any pumpkin beer until at least October 1st, 2014.

It was not an agreement I entered into lightly, for my weak, mortal side craves the succulent orange flesh in pie, in coffee, in all unholy abominations of pumpkin and product. I know it’s wrong to lust after brown sugar and nutmeg, to let a cultivar cultivate my destiny, but I’m just a man. Seasonal creep sneaks and slithers onto me, seductively suggesting I take a nice clean bite from that orange apple, season and weather be damned.

At first, I held strong. Summer’s insistence on postponing his vacation to the other side of the planet gave me strength. The orange, brown, and black of the labels did not sway my conviction, and I walked past them boldly, bravely, to other, less obnoxious fermented fare. The Pumpking held no regal power over me, the Great’er proved lesser. IPAs bolstered my resolve, and Marzens marched across my tongue and down my throat in a delicious cavalcade of beverages that were decidedly free from pumpkin. I thought I could do it. Thought the vine fruit would be defeated, left to bake until its time was ripe some time near Halloween.

But such dark energy is not to be denied. The pumpkin, knowing my devotion to the cause, summoned his darkest agents, the most twisted and malevolent of his creations, to bring me back into the fold. Little by little, day by day, the jolly jack-o-lantern chipped away at me. Every sign of Fall, every crunchy brown leaf, every slight whiff of cloves or ginger fed the entropy, increased my desire to sup at the forbidden table, sip from the forbidden cup.

From the soul of his stout, inky black soul, he captured, raptured, and ultimately tore my pledge in two. I let his eight armed ABV wash over me, surrendering, suffering, savoring.

I drank the Warlock. I broke the oath.

I am the warlock. I am the oathbreaker.

And now as his energy surges through my veins, I know that no matter how silly or sickening, how gimmicky or gauche, I will give into him, because hot damn, I love pumpkin flavored crap.

“Stars, hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desires.” ― William Shakespeare, Macbeth

Beerology: You getting fresh?

March 14, 2014 · by Oliver Gray

The word “fresh” wields potent adjectival power.

At first glance, “fresh” unequivocally translates to better. Fresh fruit? Superior to canned or jarred. Fresh air? Good for the soul, lungs, and the rest of the pulmonary system. Fresh beats? All the better for general grinding and grooving.

But when you apply fresh to a concept that’s negative (like a fresh wound), the meaning changes. Suddenly fresh doesn’t mean better, but instead acts to grade the noun, placing it at the apex of a spectrum of intensity. Fresh connotes that your noun is at the most potent, pungent, and powerful it will ever be, and further infers that it will degrade, eventually, in some capacity.

Outside of those few styles that improve with age, it would make sense that fresh beer – beer at its most innately flavorful point – would be the ideal. If fresh means the apogee of flavor, and the reason we drink beer is for flavor, then we should drink the freshest beer possible! A+B=C, so A=C, right? Right.

Despite holding this notion for years, I’d never actually tested it. It’s hard to judge just how fresh a bottle or can of beer can possibly be, given that a case may sit for weeks or months in storage and shipping, be subjected to different temperatures, light, and environmental conditions all before you even have a chance to pry the cap. Many small breweries still don’t include bottling dates, or if they do, they’re more often than not smudged illegible marks that look like a spider got into a cask, then into an inkwell.

In post-brewed storage, as the small amount of oxygen left in the bottle reacts to the rest of the primordial beer soup, trans-2-nonenal forms and leads to paper/cardboard-like flavors. To make matters worse, long siestas in non-refrigerated warehouse resorts accelerate this oxidative process. Brown bottles will also still let in some light which will strike the riboflavin, break down isohumulones, and create skunky 3-methylbut-2-ene-1-thiol. The hoppier the beer, the more isohumulone, and the easier/faster it will skunk when exposed to light.

Cans, while totally shielded from light, aren’t perfect either, and will still oxidate just like their glassy brethren. Over time, the quality of a beer inevitably fades, it’s defining characteristics changing forever. Beer is sort of like memory that way. The fluid itself is still there in the bottle, is decidedly still beer and probably tastes OK, but when you go to drink it, it’s not quite exactly like it once was: changed, muted, revised by time’s unbiased hand.

I knew all of this, but blindly assumed our distribution system worked, and that as long as I wasn’t drinking a brew months and months (or years and years) past its prime drinking time, that it had no obvious defects and looked good in the glass, I was coming pretty close to taking in the flavors, smells, and mouthfeel the brewer truly intended.

But holy hops, I’ve never been so wrong.

Doug Smiley, fellow blogger and beer-buddy, invited me to apply some science to our theories by heading to the Heavy Seas Brewery with some bottles of Loose Cannon IPA he purchased a few months prior. He suggested we do a head-to-head taste test, to see what ~90 days tenure in that brown glass did to the spirit of the beer.

I don’t like to rely on clichés for description, but in this case one serves quite well. The differences between the November 26^th 2013 bottle and the February 17^th 2014 pint from the keg (that we sampled on February 22^nd2014, for the record) were night and day. The bottled beer was quiet, subdued, like long night had cloaked the ale, the hops tucked into nice cozy water beds with the malts rolling lazily at their feet, a starchy dog mid-nap. Conversely, the keg-poured pint blazed midday summer; crisp bitterness and bright, floral citrus notes from the hops: a warm breeze through an orange grove on a Floridian afternoon.

Dan, the hospitality manager at Heavy Seas, said to us as we sat down to begin our experiment, “I never drink bottles of Loose Cannon anymore.” Having tasted the IPA at only 5-days old, I can see why. Not to say the bottled beer was “bad” by any stretch of the imagination. It was still pretty excellent, and this little experiment won’t stop me from buying bottles in the future. It will however, encourage me to drink at brewery tap rooms much more often than I had before. If you’re looking to squeeze ever possible micron of flavor out of a pint, you’ve got to drink straight from the keg, as soon as possible.

While this conclusion might seem obvious, it waxes voluble about the store-bought bottles we’re drinking, and the supposedly educated judgments we’re making on the assumption that the bottled beer is “fresh.” Especially given the popularity on IPAs, and the hop’s natural propensity to break-down rather quickly. Double especially given that a very large number of beer reviewers are basing their reviews solely on bottled and canned versions of a beer. Triple especially given that bottles are the only way to sample almost every beer that isn’t served on tap near your home.

Before you commit to an opinion about a beer or a brewery, keep in mind that when you drink bottled beer that comes from the other side of the country (or the world), you may only be drinking a shade of what came out of the fermentation tank. It may be generally representative of the recipe, but unless you know it was bottled very recently, may not always a great point of reference to form objective opinions.

For me, it’s just another reason to drink local: it legitimately tastes better. Because science.

P.S. I know there are obvious exceptions to this with styles that age or cellar well. I’m talking specifically about styles (like those on the heavy end of the hop scale) that get worse with age. So you can put away the pitchforks, barleywine and RIS folks.

Maryland Beer Bloggers Meet-up – Heavy Seas Brewery

February 24, 2014 · by Oliver Gray

I could wax social about how great it was to meet John, Jake, Doug, and Sean at the Heavy Seas Brewery this Saturday, but my voice is hoarse so I’ll let my camera do the talking.

270 degree panorama of the brewhouse and new bottling line (clicky for biggy)

Beer Chat: Caroline Sisson on Beer and Social Media

October 18, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

My first real job involved beta testing video games for Compact Disc Interactive, otherwise known as the Philips CD-i. This understated black box – an all-in-one movie, internet, and gaming machine – predated the PS3 and XBox 360 by 15 years. It failed, commercially, due to some management kerfuffles, a stupidly high price tag, and a consumer base who wasn’t ready for one device to take over every TV-related function. But it set some solid paving stones into the unrefined dirt that Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft would all step on years later as they built their flagship consoles.

I had this awesome experience (which for better or worse fueled my lifelong video game obsession) because my Dad, John Gray, was the president of Philips Media Professional. He was responsible for the development of new titles, sourcing of hardware, and myriad other fancy corporate executive things that I never fully understood. I just knew that I got to play video games before anyone else did, because my dad had a kickass job. The archived NewsWire article about his original appointment can be found here, for anyone interested.

I have a soft spot for family business. I wouldn’t have gotten into IT or homebrewing (and I guess in turn, never started this blog) if my dad hadn’t taken his vocational machete to the thicket long before I got to the jungle. He taught me to appreciate work and fun in the same way he always did, and I owe much of my success to his mentoring.

Caroline Sisson is the daughter of Hugh Sisson, the founder and owner of Heavy Seas Beer. She’s just like me, really; given a chance to see into (and appreciate) a world that those on the outside find fascinating, because of her ties to her father. I know there exist a sort of jealousy and disdain for that kind of inborn nepotism, but Caroline seems to echo her father’s love of the business and the beer.

I asked her some questions.

Tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, and your role at Heavy Seas.

My name is Caroline Sisson and I’ve been working in the marketing department at Heavy Seas for just a little over a year. I got into the beer business mainly because my father, Hugh Sisson, is the founder of Heavy Seas Beer and I grew up learning about/exposed to the craft beer culture.

I’m a graduate of Susquehanna University with a business marketing degree. I do a lot of different things within the company, which keeps my job exciting:

I handle our social media
I write & publish our monthly email newsletter
I post & promote our beer events and work events

How did growing up with a Dad who owned a brew pub/brewery affect your opinion of beer? Where you predisposed to good beer? Did you have a “bad phase” in college that maybe your dad wouldn’t have been so proud of?

Growing up, I thought it was really cool that my dad made beer for a living, but I don’t think I really “appreciated” or realized how cool it was until college. While I was still in college, I would work brewery tours and some events during my breaks, so I was exposed to craft beer at a younger age than many of my friends. But I definitely was just like everyone else; a broke college kid who could only afford Natty Light on the weekends for $12 bucks a case or whatever it was at the dingy little beer store in the small town where I went to college (and my dad knows about this phase). After I graduated and started working for the brewery, that’s when I really started learning and experiencing the wonders of craft beer. I’ve learned a lot in my time, and have been fortunate enough to attend national beer events like the Great American Beer Festival and SAVOR, where I’ve tasted some amazing beers. I love craft beer now, and have realized that “once you go craft… you never go back”.

Give us a day in the life of a social media manager at a brewery.

I usually start off by looking over our events calendar and reviewing what’s coming up, so that I can plan tweets, FB posts, etc., accordingly. I spend time looking over each tweet or post to see if it was effective. For example, how many retweets or favorites did I get on Twitter, or how many people liked or shared a FB post. Our ultimate goal is to reach as many people we can. I also spend some time monitoring others breweries on social media to see what works for them.

Do you have a specific strategic plan, or do you have a more organic approach?

Overall, we try to make every tweet, post or anything shared on social media unique to Heavy Seas. By that I mean, it reflects our personality, our interests, our goals, things that we are excited about, etc.

Do you think social media is important for a brewery beyond promoting events and appearances? If you had to rank the importance of the social media platforms, which would be at the top, and which would be at the bottom?

Absolutely – I think social media is a great way of connecting and interacting with our consumers; the people who drink and appreciate our beer. I’d say that Facebook & Twitter are tied for first. Although I tweet on a daily basis, and post on Facebook on a weekly basis, both are strong tools that we use to communicate to our followers and share information. Instagram is another area where we want to grow.

I know a lot of craft enthusiasts use Instagram. How do you feel about #beertography? Do you like to see shots of your beer out there in the wild?

Definitely! I can’t always retweet or share every photo taken of our beer, but it’s flattering to see people enjoying our product so much that they want to take a picture and share it with the social media world.

What’s your favorite thing about interacting with the beer community?

Making friends with people who love craft beer & share a passion for it.

Is there anything specific you’d like to tell the beer drinking world?

Life is too short to drink shitty beer.

Caroline often attends Heavy Seas events, and I’m sure you’ll run into her if you’re planning to attend any of the upcoming shindigs connected to Baltimore Beer Week. Caroline has also kindly offered to answer any questions you guys might have, so ask away in the comments. I’ll compile them and send them to her for follow-up.

Here’s a picture of me and her at my visit to the brewery (just so you can recognize her if you see her in person):

I’m the one wearing the hat. No, not that one. The one on the right.

Beer Review: Heavy Seas Davy Jones Lager

October 14, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

All this week my posts will be related to Heavy Seas Beer of Baltimore, Maryland. Why? Because they make great beer, are a local favorite, and were nice enough to let me wander around their brewery for a few hours with a camera.

Lager yeast and I have never seen eye-to-eukaryote. Every time I brew with it, I’m overly concerned by the lack of quick airlock-action, the diminutive krausen, and the whole needing to keep it cold even though that doesn’t make any logical sense to me. “Bottom fermentation” hides in that foggy part of my brain where I kind of understand what’s going on in terms of beer-science, but also still think it’s some kind of mystic raffinose related ritual.

For a long time, I thought all pale lagers tasted the same. I created a mental association between “lager” and “light,” as if all light beers were lagers, and vice versa. Unless it was something obviously different (like a märzen or a bock), that fizzy yellow-gold stuff all fell safely in the “mowing the lawn on a mid-July Saturday” category. Plenty of refreshment, but not much in terms of complexity. I blame four collegiate years of destroying my taste buds on Milwaukee’s Best Ice.

My fridge – colloquially named “The Beerhome” – is full of ales. That’s sort of its lot in life: a house with the thermostat stuck at 40º, bunk beds ready for several perfectly lined-up rows of stouts, IPAs, porters, and pales. I try to venture into new territory, but the tongue wants what it wants. Lagers don’t usually rent a room in the Beerhome unless 1) I’m having a party, or 2) I just had a party.

I bought Heavy Seas Davy Jones Lager because I’m a pirate. No hyperbole or jokes, I am legitimately a pirate. I have proof:

I'm the one on the right, with the beer. This was at work.

I’m the one on the right. This is a normal outfit for me.

I’m obligated to try a beer that is pirate themed, even if it’s outside of my normal taste spectrum.

And I’m glad I did.

Unlike other traditional pale lagers, Davy Jones Lager ferments at ale temperatures (~68-70º F), and is then dropped to lager temperatures for the storing process. This is the same process used to create California Steam/Common beer, for those inquiring minds. Warm temperature tolerant yeasts became popular in the 1800s when refrigeration was a luxury not every brewery could afford, especially not during the primary fermentation phase.

The result of this temperature dance is a beer that honors the clear and crisp legacy of other lagers, but also retains fruity esters and complex malt notes. It tends to be creamier than lagers fermented cold, which pleases us picky, ale-centric drinkers. It’s got more up-front hop flavor (a nice citrus bump that I think comes from the Centennials), which is an appreciated departure from the bitter dryness of Czech style pilsners, or any of the American adjunct lagers.

At 6% it’s a bit stronger than you might expect from an “easy drinking” beer, but there are no phenols or fusels present anywhere. Davy Jones has quickly become one of my favorite beers to relax with after work. It’s also a great beer to gently introduce your Bud and Coors friends to the world of craft. Sadly, Heavy Seas only plans to brew it from May-July, so I’ll just have to fill the holds of my ship (basement) with enough to tide me over these harsh Maryland winters.

Heavy Davy Jones Lager Vitals:

ABV: 6.0%
IBUs: 30
Hops: Warrior, Fuggle, Palisade, Centennial
Malts: 2-Row, Flaked Maize, Wheat Malt, Biscuit