Gear Patrol offers an overview of the best Gluten Free beers.

I just went to the Harvester pub and sampled a few of these and bought Josh the IPA No. 2. So perhaps some tasting notes from us will be coming soon*.

*Soon is a very relative term.

I wonder what kind of beer that is?

President Barack Obama offers a toast to Dakota Meyer on the patio outside of the Oval Office, Sept. 14, 2011. The President presented Meyer with the Medal of Honor Sept. 15, 2011, during a ceremony at the White House.

JB: New brewery to us, and we’re jumping right in with their “live from the barrel” beers.
MM: Those are actual holes in the barrels, that’s not a gimmick.
JB: Yeah, I was figuring they’re not under carbonation and pressure. I’m going to take a picture of the keg.

97/1000: Cherry Gold Yeller
MM: I think I’m going to like this one. “We’re blended in some straight 2010 sour pie cherry beer to give this a little fruit to ponder as you sip.”
JB: You were telling me that this was a specialty sour beer place?
MM: I think they only make sour beers.
JB: That’s basically unheard of for a brewpub. Well, let’s taste this thing.
MM: Just smell it! It makes my mouth water!
JB: Well, not for me. I’m not addicted to sour beers the way you are.
MM: It’s so much like a drinking vinegar, if you like those. Man, this is the best beer I’ve had this year.
JB: What’s the best beer I’ve had this year? We haven’t 1000 beered any of them, but the CDA or Black IPA style beers are what I’ve enjoyed most so far in 2011. Tell me why this stands out for you.
MM: I think I’ve realized I don’t like really hoppy beers, and this is not hoppy.
JB: It’s more than not hoppy, PBR’s not hoppy.
MM: But that brings it into a zone where I might like it, and the sourness is what I really like.
JB: It seems like if sour beers were more widely available, you’d have them at home all the time.
MM: I sometimes buy the one sour beer from the store near my house, actually. But you can’t get six packs, you can’t hit just any old corner store… You know, the thing that disturbs me about sour beers, it’s kind of the Linux of beers. You get the tie-dyed, bearded vibe. There’s an especially nerdy cultural element to it.
JB: Again, if it were mainstream, it would solve both the access problem and the cultural barrier.
MM: You like but don’t love a sour beer?
JB: I wouldn’t even go that far. I don’t think I’d ever choose to have one. Maybe it’s just that I don’t associate it with the flavor of beer. And I like beer, a really wide range of beers. But this doesn’t say “beer” to me.

98/1000: Straight Red
MM: “A single barrel from the blenders.” What does that mean? Who are the blenders? Oh, I like this: “Deep rich fruit. Tart dark cherries on the palate. No fruit was used in the making of this beer.” Wait, is this a “glass”? $5.50?
JB: Yeah. You’ve got expensive taste. It is hard to believe no fruit was used, having tasted it.
MM: It’s not as sour. I don’t get the “lingering burn” they promised. I feel like you could lie to someone and say you got some new crazy wine, and they would drink this and believe you.
JB: That’s what I mean, I don’t know where in my brain to fit these beers. It’s not refreshing, but it’s not for sipping either. It’s got a complex flavor. Honey and caramel and fruit and —
MM: Why would it not be for sipping, then? I think of it is as something you’d drink while you sit in your robe by the fire, reading Moby Dick with your dog at your feet. It’s the brandy of beers.
JB: I’ll give that a try.
MM: We’ll try to find a golden retriever for you to borrow.

JB: I don’t know why I’m so sensitive to the context. I think I’m just now fully experiencing the taste of it. There’s so much going on.
MM: You don’t look like you like it. Just based on your expression.
JB: I’m not going to argue that point.
MM: I would choose this every time I had the option.

JB: It’s a special edition.
MM: It’s true, birthday edition!
JR: And special G-rad guest edition.
GW: Goodbye edition.
MM: And it’s Calvin’s first 1000 beers! And Josh’s last.
JB: I’m passing the torch.
MM: Okay, which one’s first?
JB: The small one.
MM: Founders Brewing.
JB: With an apostrophe?
MM: No, but it seems like there is a capital S.
JB: That is just for symmetry.
JR: We have found that bad graphic design does not indicate a bad beer.
SS: It’s usually better!
MM: It claims to have started in 1997.
JB: What’s the actual beer name and type?
95/1000:
MM: Dirty Bastard. Scotch-style Ale. George, do you want to say anything about this beer?
GW: This is from a brewery that’s a 10-minute walk from my house. This beer has been on a train, unrefrigerated, for several days. It is not my favorite of this brewery’s beer. But it is their flagship beer. And Curt has rated it quite highly before.
CM: After Mike and I did our blogging tour, I hosted a beer tasting, and this was the highest rated. But Mike did not get to try it.
GW: I don’t know why I didn’t think, of this, but I could have brought a mix-n-match six-pack.
JB: Let’s taste.
GW: What are we supposed to say?
JB: There are no rules.
MM: I wonder if the fact that I’m drinking it out of a coffee cup is influencing how I feel about this beer.
JR: You like coffee, so you might like it more.
CM: It’s dark, but not bitter, and kind of sweet.
GW: They make a “Kentucky Breakfast Stout” beer… They have a maple-aged beer, they have beers aged in bourbon barrels. They are experimenting a lot right now. Their barrel-aged beers are stored underground in gypsum mines.

JR: I thought you said “Egyptian mines” and I thought you were so full of shit.
GW: Gypsum. They make walls and gum out of it. It’s a mineral. Michigan is right above a swirling vortex of gypsum.
MM: This kind of reminds me of the Session Black. Dark, but drinkable.
GW: These are notorious for hangovers. Monday night, everything’s half-off. So there are a lot of Tuesday hangovers in Grand Rapids. Do you have any questions you’d like me to field?
MM: When was the first time you drank beer?
GW: Actually, I don’t know. I don’t remember anything! My dad was an amateur brewer, so I think I accidentally drank it when I was a kid.
SS: Your dad was an amateur brewer before it was cool?
GW: He’s basically a chemist. He stopped now, but he was interested in doing it, because he liked to make something that wasn’t at work.
SS: What beers of Founders do you not enjoy?
GW: This isn’t an everyday beer for me. I usually get whatever’s on tap and I haven’t tried before. They have a new one called “DEATH” that I want to try when I get back. They had a raspberry beer called “Rübæus” that they had to stop making when raspberry prices went up. Raspberries aren’t grown much in Michigan, but cherries are, so they’re switching to cherries for their fruit beers. I like their Centennial IPA a lot.
MM: When I went to the Full Sail brewery, they had about 10 beers, total.
GW: Yeah, these guys have like 20. And they’re changing all the time. They had all these spiced Christmas beers last winter. They had one called Spice Rack that tasted … like a spice rack.
96/1000: Full Sail Top Sail Imperial Porter
JB: I’ll point out that this was a very hot, limited release, where the beer stores had to have limits on how many bottles people could buy, they’d announce it on their blogs… It was kind of a big deal.
MM: It looks like motor oil as it pours.
GW: It’s definitely barrel-aged. But there’s not a lot of taste to it.
MM: The aftertaste disappears… once you taste it, it’s gone.
GW: Smelling it, I expected it to be really strong, but once I had it in my mouth, there wasn’t as much to it.
SS: It smells like a wafer cookie. Or a Necco wafer.
JB: It’s chalky.
GW: It certainly smells the part.
JB: I guess I didn’t have the same expectation that it would be super-flavorful, but I’m sidetracked by the smell. It smells amazing!
MM: This is a sharing bottle.

JR: It’s part of the problem with it, that you can’t just sit down and drink it with two people.
SS: I could just sit down and knock this back.
GW: I’m not let down, but I’m surprised and a little confused that this isn’t more flavorful.
JB: You thought it would be, like, challening.
GW: Exactly. I’m used to cringing a little after having a bourbon-aged beer.
[Mike pours his beer into a brandy snifter.]
JB: It’s going to taste so much better like that.
MM: It is! It is much better. Lesson one: Mugs are better for beer.
GW: I don’t agree. I think you should drink darker beers, and bourbon beers out of these.
MM: But not Budweiser.
GW: No, just the ones that rely a lot on smell.

94/1000: Russian River Consecration
JB: What are we drinking?
MM: Russian River Consecration.
JB: One of the rotating taps here?
MM: And they wouldn’t give me a pint, only 8 ounces of it.
JB: So it’s potent stuff. What drew you to it?
MM: I ran into Mike from the beer store. He asked me if I liked sour beers, and I said yes. And he recommended it highly.
JB: They’re pretty out of the mainstream, and you really do like them. So I guess we know, to some degree, what to expect here.
MM: Go ahead and try it.
JB: It doesn’t give anything up in its smell but then you drink it and it’s sour and chewy. It really shocked my palate.
MM: It’s such an unusual flavor for beer, and it’s only because of that tasting at Belmont Station that I know that I like them.
JB: At that tasting, I got the impression you would drink sour beers all the time, if they were available.
MM: I think I would.


JB: But what place do they hold in the beverage world for you?
MM: Well, it’s kind of like wine.
JB: I see that point, actually. It’s not something you knock back. So how’s it different from other sour beers?
MM: It’s been so long since I’ve had one, that I don’t really know.
JB: There’s a maltiness to it, which surprised me. And caramel.
MM: And like, a grape. Artificial grape flavor. I feel like I would get a purple moustache off it.
JB: It’s so sticky. You get a thin version of it on the roof of your mouth.
MM: It makes sense that they don’t give you a pint of this. I wouldn’t want a pint of wine, either.
JB: How much was this?
MM: I think it was six dollars. About comparable to a glass of wine.
JB: I’m interested in fancy beers replacing wine in a restaurant setting. You really don’t see that. But it’s clearly possible. There’s enough variety, specialization, and quality in beers.
95/1000: Amnesia Sleigh-Jerker Winter Warmer
MM: What does it have to sound so porno?
JB: I can’t even say it.


MM: So what kind of beer is this? I thought it was going to be more like a porter.
JB: Usually those winter beers are a little sweeter… Dopplebocks, that kind of thing.
MM: Maltier, as opposed to hoppier?
JB: They’re never very hoppy.
MM: Well, this sleigh-jerker is certainly quaffable.
JB: It’s so smooth, I’m not entirely sure I’m drinking it. It does have some aftertaste that reminds me that I just drank something. But that’s probably cause it’s kind of sticky.
[Note: The laptop’s battery went dead at this point, so we were forced to enjoy the remainder of the beer without commentary. We hope that despite our technical difficulty, we still managed to convey some key aspects of the experience of drinking this beer.]

We drank this too fast to get a picture…
92/1000: HUB Cascadian Dark
JB: I love this! And our fries just came!
MM: It’s very hoppy.
JB: Is it?
MM: Isn’t it?
JB: It is hoppy, but no way would I say very hoppy. Hoppy for a dark beer, too. But that’s what makes it work well, that it’s not a bitter, thin, beer. It’s mild and round for being hoppy.
MM: It has that stickiness that a hoppy beer has.
JB: I think we usually call it resiny. I don’t want to obsess about whether it’s hoppy. I think it has so many other great things going on that I’d rather talk about.
MM: What’s a dark beer that’s like this?
JB: I’ve been drinking light-colored beers all summer. I don’t even remember.
MM: I think if I blind-tasted this, I would assume it was a much brighter color.
JB: I’m going to close my eyes and drink it. [drinks] I might think red.
MM: Oh, yeah. There’s that iron flavor in there. Have you been over there, to HUB?
JB: Yeah, I kind of hate it.
MM: Bad bike parking, huh?
JB: It was a while ago, maybe they fixed that. But they have that big “bike art” thing over the bar, and then shitty bike parking? And they’re on Powell?
MM: Don’t hype it as bikey?
JB: And they have bad pizza.
MM: I was surprised they weren’t more like Green Dragon, from what I’d read about them being hard core beer nerds.
JB: Despite having nearly no bike parking, this place feels very bike-friendly. All that aside…
MM: They make good beer.
JB: I haven’t been 100% blown away, but a few have been rock star. This among them.
MM: But I think we should have done these in the opposite order.

93/1000: Oskar Blues Scottish
MM: This is sweet. Especially after the HUB. It’s nothing like that beer, except in color.
JB: I think of this as late fall.
MM: I was thinking winter beer, but you want it at this not-too-cold temperature…
JB: Winter is heavier for me. This is a middleweight. Sweet is right, though.
MM: It has an oiliness, like a porter.
JB: Fades against my Caesar salad, though. I can hardly taste it. I’m not sure I’d return to this. I’m trying to picture when I’d serve it. Maybe for a lady? On a cold fall day?
MM: That’s the picture that I’m getting. You’re inside, and it’s nice, and it’s cold and miserable outside. And you don’t want tea or a hot chocolate.
JB: I don’t mean to bring the sexism here, but broadly based on my experience with taste, beer, and gender…
MM: Have we done an Oskar Blues before?
JB: They do cans. We’ve had Dale’s Pale. Oh, and we had Gordon, and we kind of hated it. Gold medal, 2008 World Beer Championships.
MM: I’d be surprised if this won any awards. Not that it’s bad! But I think those competitions reward very remarkable beers. This beer seems like one that will quickly fade from our memories.

90/1000: Terminal Gravity ESG
JB: Mike, we’ve been drinking this all summer.
MM: We were going to call it the “official beer of the summer.”
JB: Can we even do that any more? It’s too late.
MM: Steve has been calling it that.
Jona: Our summer is going to run into October.
JB: So, let’s do it. Beer of the summer.
Jona: I haven’t had it all summer, but I’ve had it before.
JB: I don’t want to claim that I “discovered” this beer, but I discovered this beer when I went out to Wallowa County in June. Everyone has it on tap out there.
Jona: I tend to buy beer based on its graphic design.
MM: Would this one pass?
Jona: No, it looks like a baseball team.
MM: It should be called “ASG” for “Awesome Summer Golden.” Then it wouldn’t get confused with ESB.
JB: Why do you like this beer?
MM: I like that you can drink a lot of it. It doesn’t come on too strong, it’s not bitter, but it still has a distinct and good flavor.
JB: That’s the whole story. It’s really drinkable, but it’s not thin. Instead, it’s delicious.

91/1000: Full Sail Session Black
MM: It’s a premium dark lager.
JB: Like Negra Modelo? I don’t even know what that is.
MM: It tastes like barbecue.
JB: Like barbecue sauce.
Jona: I just ate some barbecue sauce, so I couldn’t really tell.
JB: You know how barbecue sauces have chocolate or coffee in them? This has that same vibe.
MM: Wasn’t the original Session supposed to be a limited-time thing?
JB: Yeah, but it was really popular, and they kept doing it. So, do you think this is a “Session”?
MM: No, not really. It’s not thick and chewy like a porter, even though it’s dark.
JB: I wouldn’t want to drink, like four of these.
MM: That seems like a problem, since it’s called Session. Good, but not great.
JB: I won’t get this instead of a 12 of Sessions. Those are so perfect.
—
MM: Can we do a little aside?
JB: …
MM: I’m sorry about all the wine I’ve been drinking. I sometimes feel that it’s better than beer.
Jona: It’s better.
JB: Mike, why are you drinking wine?
MM: I don’t think one should have to defend one’s love of a fine beverage.
—

92/1000: Hell or High Watermelon Wheat Beer
JB: I hate a lot about this before we start drinking it.
MM: It’s from the Twenty-first Amendment Brewery.
JB: Watermelon? Is it supposed to taste like watermelon?
MM: “Wheat beer, fermented with watermelon, with added watermelon juice.”
Jona: That sounds good.
JB: I …
Jona: You’re grossed out by it.
JB: Mike, why did you give me such a big one?
MM: You’re really going to like it.
JB: The watermelon isn’t overpowering. It’s way back there, it’s the watermelon flavor of Jolly Rancher, but none of the sweetness.
MM: It’s a true watermelon taste, not artificial.
JB: Really?
MM: But I see what you mean by Jolly Rancher. But really none of the sweetness.
JB: It’s mostly aftertaste. It’s normal until it’s out of your mouth.
MM: I really like this.
Jona: Me too!
MM: It’s a weird beer that tastes good.
JB: So, you’d get it again?
MM: Yeah! I bought this six-pack and was excited to share it with you.
JB: What’s it for? I don’t understand!
MM: Mike, the guy at the beer store, said he likes it, but just one at a time.
JB: As I continue to drink this, the aftertaste seems to ramp up, and get more badder.
Jona: It’s like sangria or something.
Mike: If you had to Netflix-star rate this, what would you give it?
JB: One or two. I haven’t decided.
Jona: “Hate it”?
Mike: It’s still beer.
JB: Yeah, but remember that Pandan beer? That was bad. You know, it’s not even just the flavor. It’s a lack of comprehension. I don’t understand why.

[An Xbox 360 is on in front of the drinkers.]
Jona: Mike, let’s play.
Mike: We have to drink beer.
Jona: I am drinking beer. I like it!
88/1000: Ninkasi Spring Reign Ale
Josh: This a spring seasonal? I always think it’s going to be a brewery’s excuse to brew a light beer. But this is far more flavorful. What do you think, can you taste it?
Mike: I can taste more of it than I could yesterday. It’s bright.
Josh: It’s hoppy, it’s bitter. That’s what I’m more surprised about.
Mike: I think I’m missing the hoppiness. I can’t taste it.
Josh: I wonder if there are specific beers designed for you to drink while you’re sick.
Mike: They should make a beer with a decongestant in it.
Josh: Then they would be regulated by yet another agency.
Mike: Doctors could prescribe it.
Josh: I don’t think I’d go around suggesting this to people expecting a spring beer. I like it —
Mike: You don’t think it’s a session beer?
Josh: I get why they think of it as a spring beer, but it’s going against expectations. It’s refreshing, but it’s also more intense than what you’d usually get in spring.

89/1000: Bear Republic XP Pale Ale
Josh: Did you like the Bear Republic 95 Pale Ale?
Mike: I liked the Me edition.
Josh: Bear Republic CE, anyone?
Mike: Then you could take it with you.
Jona: I like it. It’s very good. The aftertaste isn’t annoying, like a lot of beers. It’s fizzier than the other beer, too.
Josh: It doesn’t have hardly any aftertaste. It’s got a round toasty flavor. More malt, really. I’d also say, not pale. In color or flavor.
Mike: It does say “Golden colored ale.”
Josh: They’re trying to reinterpret, then.
Mike: [reading the bottle] They also want us to come visit them.
Josh: I’d be happy to.