East Coast Vs West Coast Punk Rock Brew Tour

[link to podcast page]
WFMU's Beer Hear! East Coast Vs West Coast Podcast

Three years ago, Smuttynose's NY sales rep Pat Fondiller started the East Coast Vs West Coast Brew Tour with two East Coast craft brewers and two from the West Coast. The idea was to take over the taps of a bar while a particular music genre battled over the sound system (think East Coast Hip Hop artists vs. West Coast Hip Hop artists) and the beers battled on the tap towers.

(C) Jan from Sierra Nevada, (R) B.R.

Pat said that the inspiration of the annual event was the fact that all of his music-centric pals drank terrible beer, and this was an excuse to try to get them turned on to the good stuff.

Jeff from Sixpoint, unidentified person, Pat from Smutty and Yvon from Oscar Blues.

We went to Barcade Jersey City, one stop on the 8-city stops on the tour, to talk to Pat about the history of the EC/WC Brew Tour, the schedule for this year's installment, as well as some of his ideas for future tours. One thing he told us was that, continuing with the beer/music collaborative themes, Smuttynose Director of Brewing Operations Dave Yarrington wants to brew a beer called  "B.W.A. -- Straight Out Of Hampton" once that their new facility opens in Hampton, N.H.! Suckers to tha side I know you hate my I.P.A. -- you're gunna get hops!

Barcade JC

Here are all the remaining dates left on the tour:


April 9 Bronx Alehouse -- Bronx, NY
April 10 Birdsall House -- Peekskill, NY
April 11 The Black Sheep Ale House -- Mineola, NY
April 12 Beer Authority -- NYC, NY
April 16 Julians -- Providence, RI
April 17 The Independent -- Providence, RI
April 18 Bar Matchless -- Brooklyn, NY


See ALL the dates for this year on the tour's FaceBook page.

Don't believe in Beer Santa? Now you do.

Sierra's Jan with his pal Liz of WFMU

Final Pumpkin Podcast!

[link to podcast page]
WFMU's Beer Hear! with Bob W. and B.R. from 11/8/2012

Our third and final Pumpkin Podcast Panel was recorded in two parts. The first part was recorded on the evening of Oct. 29, shortly after we lost power and heat, thanks to Hurricane Sandy. With our battery powered recorder, an emergency LED light and some candles, we tried Smuttynose Pumpkin Ale and La Citrueille Céleste de Citracado (The Heavenly Pumpkin of Citricado), a "collabeeration" between Stone, The Bruery and Elysian.

 

Smuttynose was one of the most "beerlike" pumpkin beers out of all 11 pumpkin beers we tried, with discernible hop characteristics. Smutty's fell close in line to the standard pumpkin pie spice flavors that defined versions by Bluepoint, Post Road, Wolavers, and Captain Lawrence, though they all had their distinctions.
 
La Citrueille, a 5% abv ale, was one of the more non-standard pumpkin beers, with one of the more esoteric list of ingredients: yams, sugar pumpkins, fenugreek, lemon verbena, rye malt (both regular and dark), brown and honey malts, C-15 dextrine malt, birch bark in the whirlpool, New Zealand Motueka hops. It was earthy and a bit herbal, and intentionally far from the pumpkin pie spice characteristics of other pumpkin beers.

In the second part, long after both electricity and heat were restored to our home, we finished the panel with three outstanding beers. We started with the Midnight Sun T.R.E.A.T. (The Royal Eccentric Ale Treatment) which wasn't very big on the pumpkin pie flavors, but was rich, dark, heavy, complex and delicious. It's billed as a 7.8% Imperial Chocolate Pumpkin Porter. This one's going to end up in the fridge again!

Then, a favorite of mine and a non-favorite of B.R.'s, the Southern Tier Pumpking! This 8.6% seasonal Imperial Pumpkin Ale is a sweet, almost buttery/creamy, gingerbready desert of a beer. It is the quintessential pumpkin pie beer. It's pretty much a love it or hate it kind of beer. And while it's not what I'd reach for on a hot summer afternoon, I'm happy to drink it from October through November!

We finished up with a beer from a brewery which you might assume makes nothing but pumpkin beer -- Jolly Pumpkin. Out of the 15 beers they list on their website, only one, La Parcela, is made with pumpkin. Jolly Pumpkin is known for their sour beers, using open fermentation, oak aging and bottle conditioning. La Parcela, which we had from a growler filled at Good Beer, definitely had sourness. But it was a mild sourness, mild spiciness, complimented by earthiness and bitterness -- delicate and complex. This was the lightest bodied beer in the entire panel, and probably the most refreshing.

Hey! An actual pumpkin beer from Jolly Pumpkin!

Out of the entire panel, the La Parcela, Carton, La Citrueille, Oak Jacked Imperial, and Treat were the most "un-pumpkin" pumpkin beers. Smuttynose edged away from the pack with it's unique hop bitterness. For the beers that aimed towards pumpkin pie, Pumpking was a stand out. It was interesting to see how some angled towards nutmeg flavors, others towards cinnamon, and yet others steered away from standard pie spice all together. The variety of the beers -- in color, from pale yellow to near opaque, in ABV, from 5% to 10.31% -- demonstrated that there's a wide range in everything when it comes to pumpkin beer!

Weathering the storm.

La Citrueille.

Smuttynose and the Portsmouth Brewery

Part 1 of 2

Part 2 of 2

If you don't want to download the podcast, you can STREAM IT HERE.

On December 29, 2011 we visited JT, the Minister of Propaganda for Smuttynose Brewing and the Portsmouth Brewery, and Tod Mott, the head brewer of the Portsmouth Brewery in Portsmouth, N.H.  Thanks to a too-full minidisc, the informative and interesting interview that we did with Tod did not properly record. We'll need to meet up with Tod again, and this time have a blank disc on hand.

J.T., B.R., T.M. and B.W., in the Jimmy LaPanza
lounge of the P.B.

Though the interview with JT thankfully took, and he told us about both the 7-barrel brewpub in downtown Portsmouth and the 50-barrel brewery on the outskirts of town. The brewpub was founded in 1991, four years after the Northampton Brewery in central Mass. -- both started by siblings Peter and Janet Egelston.

At one point they split the business and Janet took control of the Northampton Brewery, the oldest brewpub in New England, and Peter got the Portsmouth Brewery. Being from N.H. I can tell you first hand that the pub was an immediate rage -- and for good reason, too. It wasn't just a novelty as the first modern brewpub in this food-centric New England port town, but it was a very impressive brewery, offering extremely well made beers and very interesting atypical styles.

A few years after the Portsmouth Brewery was underway, another local beer business, the Frank Jones Brewery, was started by a descendant of one of the most successful and wealthy entrepreneurs of the 1800s, Frank Jones, who in the late 1800s was one of the largest producers of beer in America. Unfortunately, the gene for business acumen didn't make it down the line, and the enterprise was soon bankrupt and its assets sold at auction.

As the story goes, Peter went to the auction just to "check it out", but came away with a new business -- the Smuttynose Brewery.

In this week's podcast you'll hear the details about the history of both breweries, their relationship to one another, and also the exciting new plans for a new Smuttynose brewery to be located on a farm in Hampton, New Hampshire!

At the Portsmouth Brewery.

 

The Smutty bottling line from afar.
Smutty barrel aged beers.
	I can't hear you -- can you make it LAUTER?!
	These tanks held the 2011-12 Winter Ale.
Hey beer nerds -- my eyes are up HERE!
Pat F.'s motorcycle gang has a long reach.
	This bridge is history.