Bottled Michigan: Short's Good Humans Dry Hopped Brown Ale

Beer trends are hard to track. My most trustworthy sources are the brewers themselves; I'm not able to find published data of Michigan beer shipping broken down by style, so in no way can I be sure that IPAs are the most popular current style of craft ales, with sour beers enjoying some major momentum.  I can't be sure, but that's what I've been told by several brewers, and it makes sense anecdotally.  IPAs are huge (even in the frozen December, when my palate turns to browns and stouts to protect me from the wicked cold), and sour ales are becoming ever more available.  Belgian style beers seem to be riding a wave of popularity as well, no doubt bolstered by Jolly Pumpkin all-sour ale brewery.

The problem, as I alluded to above, is that I have no real desire to drink a hop coated masterpiece in the dead of winter. I do not want the flirtatious scent of banana and clove curled up with me around the fire as the snow pelts the windows and the flames stubbornly chase the shadows into the flickering corners. I want chocolate, and vanilla, and bourbon soaked vanilla beans. I want malt, front and center, sweet and cloying and complex and toasted. I want a beer thick enough that it obscures the fire when I hold it to the light, and a beer with enough alcohol to warm the throat as it goes down. Find me a brewer who can bring me the best of both worlds, someone who could bring the light and refreshing hops flavor and blend it with a warm and inviting brown ale, and that would be a good human indeed.

THIS is what should be trending now. Short's Good Humans ale is a dry hopped brown ale; it smells like an IPA, pours like a brown, and sips like both of them. It has enough hops to impart a refreshing piney scent, and the beer does not feel as heavy or full as a traditional brown ale might. The hops are piney, not citrus, and impart a feeling of crisp snow perched on evergreen trees rather than honeybees grazing on flowers in the backyard.

Behind the hops lie the exact type of beer I would pick for winter – the malt is sweet and caramel, rich and smooth, not toasted but balanced and unassuming. This is a beer I immediately regretted only buying 2 of when Laura and I picked them up to try them.

Short's Good Humans dry hopped brown supplies everything I like about winter with a refreshing kick to remind me that this season won't last forever. If I could pick any type of beer to be trending, it would be the “dry hopped brown ale” category.

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Sacred Cow Shrimp Tacos

Tacos and Beer: A Love Story

This past week has been really cold.  I mean really, REALLY (expletive) cold.  And seeing as though it's only the middle of December, sadly, it's only going to get colder.  Honestly, I’ve already shifted into hyper-hibernation mode, seeking out comfort food in preparation of the inevitable coming months of Snowmageddon imprisonment.  But for some reason last week, I got a hankering for some delicious tacos.. probably because I really just wanted to forget about how cold it was and how hard it was snowing.  To me tacos scream summer time.   Perhaps it's all of the bright flavors or the fact that they go so well with an ice cold IPA.  Either way, these shrimp tacos are definitely the perfect dinner for summer (or closing the blinds and pretending it's still summer!). They are quick, easy, and light. They also showcase some of my favorite flavors: chipotle, cilantro, and lime.

The combination of spices in this recipe may make the shrimp a little spicy, but the coolness of the cilantro-orange beer sauce balances out the flavor nicely. If you do want to tone it down a little bit, you can omit the seeds from the chipotle chiles or cut the number of chiles used in half.

So here it is, for your stomach's pleasure... 

1.5-2 pounds raw large shrimp, peeled and deveined

1 bottle (12 oz) Arbor Brewing Sacred Cow IPA

6 large cloves garlic, peeled and smashed with side of knife

1/4 tsp salt

3 chipotle chiles in adobo sauce, minced (and seeded if you don't want your tacos too spicy), plus 1 Tbsp adobo sauce

1/3 cup light mayonnaise

2 tablespoons chili sauce

2 tablespoons minced red onion

1 teaspoon grated orange zest

1 tablespoon orange juice

1/4 cup chopped cilantro

Garnish: finely shredded iceberg lettuce, diced avocado, minced red onion, cilantro leaves

Place shrimp in large, deep skillet in a single layer; add beer, garlic and salt. Turn heat to medium. Slowly poach shrimp about 4-5 minutes, turning shrimp about halfway through, until just cooked through (beer will just be approaching a simmer at this point). The cooking time may need to be adjusted, depending on what size shrimp you use.  DO NOT overcook them, though, because they get rubbery and disgusting.  Remove shrimp with slotted spoon to bowl and cool. Bring beer and garlic to a boil; boil 8 minutes, or until reduced to 3 Tbsp, skimming surface once or twice. Strain liquid into a bowl to remove all the leftover shrimp gunk, and then add the garlic back in, mash the garlic and let the sauce cool.

Add chiles, adobo sauce, mayonnaise, chili sauce, red onion, orange zest and juice, and chopped cilantro to beer mixture; whisk dressing until blended.

Add shrimp to dressing; toss to coat.  You can make and refrigerate everything up until this point a day or two ahead of time.  

To serve, top tortillas with shredded lettuce and shrimp mixture. Garnish with diced avocado, onion, and cilantro.

Shrimp tacos.  People either love them or hate them.  But the people that hate them have never tried them.  Go figure.  Just let me say that they aren't what you think, and you should give them a chance.  I even made a believer out of Seth with this recipe!

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Schmohz Brewery -- Ladies Ale Society Beer Tasting Event

Nearly 35 women packed into the brewing facility at Schmohz Brewing Company in Grand Rapids, MI on November 6th.  Around picnic tables and folding chairs, they chatted and nibbled from appetizer and cheese plates as servers poured 15 different samples of the beers available at the pub.

Chas Thompson

"Swirl it around, smell it, and then take the first sip," Chas Thompson, the brewer and leader of the evening's tasting event instructed us.

Yet another wine tasting?  Hardly. The participants were sampling the first delicious brew of the evening: the golden and sweet Valley City Cream Ale. That's right -- beer tasting.  And it was just for us women.

(These two photos courtesy of The Great American Brew Trail)

It should not come as a surprise when I say women are a growing presence in the beer industry, in everything from brewing it to judging it to simply drinking it.  In July, a Gallup poll found that 27 percent of women prefer beer over wine or liquor, up 7 percentage points from 2007.  And while many women have always enjoyed beer, until recent years, they weren't really coming together to talk about it.  Maybe it's because there tends to be a stigma with beer that you have to be manly and drive a big truck in order to drink it, but events like this bring women together and prevent them from feeling inhibited by their boyfriends or husbands.  

Since we're on the subject of women and beer...as the beverage has gained in popularity among women, many have gotten into brewing, helping to bring even more flavors and combinations to the table. Beer is now scented with coriander or cardamom, tastes like white chocolate, or has notes of vanilla, raspberry, or pumpkin.  It helps that women's palates are supposedly more advanced; a recent Wall Street Journal article about studies done at British beer producer SABMiller found that women are more sensitive to the flavors in beer.  Their research shows that women are the superior sex when it comes to detecting such undesirable chemicals as 3-methyl-2-butene-1-thiol, which makes beer taste "skunky."    Because of this, the company's number of female advanced-level tasters has quadrupled in 10 years, now comprising 30 percent of their 1,000 advanced beer tasters, even though men account for 72.8 percent of the world's beer sales.  Tasters also help brewers decide how long their beers will stay fresh on store shelves, and what new products to introduce.  

While beer tasting events can be found at other breweries and brewpubs, making the meetings the exclusive domain of women does much to change the dynamic of what would otherwise be a male-dominated topic.  The most obvious difference?  There was a lot less ego.  Sorry guys, but women aren’t as comfortable asking questions with you around, and at this event, we could ask questions and get our curiosities satisfied without feeling frowned upon. The evening's topics drilled down into specific styles, ingredients, and techniques used in brewing beer.  Whether pairing three versions of a given style of beer or talking about what different varieties of hops bring to the party, the focus remained on the educational aspect: teaching women about beer, its ingredients, and the vocabulary of the pallet.  Chas even passed around some two-row barley, chocolate malted barley, and hop pellets to smell, touch, and taste.  Mmm...barley.

I will not bore you with my thoughts on each of the 15 beers we sampled that evening (especially since we have yet to write up a brewery experience on Schmohz), but I will highlight the stars of the evening for me:

The Oktoberfest: a wonderful dark harvest ale brewed with chocolate malt, which poured a deep brown with a very bright maltiness coupled nicely with a rich wheatiness in the nose.  The flavor was a perfect mix of both its inherent malt body and the semi-sweet wheatiness of the style -- a crisp nuttiness that matched the deep malts perfectly.  Pairing this with food seems like a given, since it practically tastes like you could (and should!) turn it into bread and slather it with butter. Good stuff.

The Zingiberene Ale:  brewed as a gruit using only water, malted barley, ginger root, and yeast.  The color was sort of a cloudy tan-brown color (think cloudy apple cider), with a light body and lots of carbonation.  The aroma was fantastic: ginger (lots of it, as promised), toasted malt, and maybe even a little banana and sour apple.  The taste was absolutely loaded with ginger -- a little tart at first, then reminded me a lot of the pickled ginger you get with sushi, and then finished completely clean, dry, and refreshing.  Very unique and a must-try if you like the taste of ginger.  

The Pickle Tink Ale:  a strawberry wheat ale, perfect for a some light, fun drinking on a warm summer day.  A hazy, yellow body topped with a thin, fizzy white head.  The taste and aroma were light and sweet, with very slight hops and fresh strawberries.  Very sessionable, and a great beer for the beginner or "non-beer drinker".

Last, but certainly not least, the Barley Wine.  Oh, what a way to end the evening.  At 14.5% ABV, this one packs a major punch, and I was glad I had my DD standing by after ending the night with this one.  Very complex hop tones, with hints of citrus and plum flavors.  "Crafted from unbelievable amounts of barley and hops", this is one I can see myself enjoying more of (slowly, and in moderation, of course) while sitting by the fire on a cold winter day.

My lovely drinking companions, Danielle and Jessica

So, whether you're new to the beer drinking scene or you've been a regular at Schmohz since they opened in 2004, the next Ladies Ale Society beer tasting event is something you should be sure not to miss!   Thanks to Chas for keeping it fun, laid back, and informative, and for recognizing the growing interest in an event like this in our area!

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Hopcat

For a few years now, Grand Rapids has been home to Hopcat, a brewpub focused on bringing everything I want to the city in which I live. They are a bar focused on Michigan beer that also offers a spectacular selection of American and international beers. They have a robust and ever rotating tap selection. To my knowledge, nowhere in Grand Rapids is there a superior draft selection, and very few competitors even come close. I have yet to discuss beer with a Hopcat employee who was not intimately familiar with the art of crafting and drinking fine beer. And to top it all off, they have a friendly, knowledgeable, and very original crew manning their own brewing facility right on site.

Crack fries.

Laura and I arrived on site around two in the afternoon on a weekday. The sun, realizing that it could pretty much phone in any day it wants in the month of December, elected not to show up. A lazy drizzle instead greeted us, determined to make sure “outside” was much less pleasant than “inside.” Hopcat was not yet crowded, and we had some time to speak with Jake and Jeff, the Hopcat brewers.

The Brewing Facility

Hopcat's brewing facility is not large – in fact quite small by some standards. The mash tun and the boiler are both displayed in their shiny glory up on the main floor of Hopcat. We were fortunate enough to catch Jeff and Jake just as they were bringing their newest beer – coincidentally, a porter – up to a boil. The primitive flavors of grain and sugar emanating from the nascent beer were heady and delightful; it's not often in our travels that we catch brewers at this moment in the process, and it's really interesting to see the very beginnings of turning malt and water into yeast-food.

Crack fries. 

Downstairs, Jeff and Jake talked shop with us regarding their opinions on beer, from the market as it is to where they see it going. They showed us their Holiday Spice ale in the Brite tank, a complex and very original beer brewed with vanilla beans soaked in Maker's Mark bourbon, that sported nutmeg and eggnog flavors that inexplicably delivered hints of banana bread. I've had one other banana bread beer in my life and Hopcat's holiday ale was superior. Jeff and Jake mentioned their plan to put this beer on nitrogen, making for a smooth, creamy beer available in the coming weeks that I certainly won't be missing (and you shouldn't either).

Hopcat's brewers both started by home brewing, and have less experience that one might assume, given their spectacular products and imaginative recipes; each had under two years before Mark Sellers, the current owner of Hopcat (in addition to three other very popular Grand Rapids icons), chose them to man his brewpub. They share my belief that, with breweries like Jolly Pumpkin leading the way, sour ales will gain in popularity as the craft beer market matures in the midwest. (They even let us in on the fact that they have a sour ale aging right now, which will be ready in mid 2011!) Like many of our readers, their preferred breweries (when they are not at their own, of course) include some of the Michigan staples – Arcadia Brewing, Bell's Brewing, and Founder's.`

The bottom line? Hopcat's brewers are hard working, friendly, knowledgeable, and very imaginative; the next time you're in the third best beer bar in the world, make sure you say hi to Jeff and Jake; it's their hard work you're enjoying, after all. And speaking of their hard work...

The Beer

Hopcat is listed with the state of Michigan as a brewpub. This means that they can brew and sell their own beer on site as well as sell the alcoholic products of other companies. They cannot, however, distribute their wares. That means that while Hopcat has the flexibility to offer a huge selection of beer (and spirits) not made on site, one cannot find their products at local specialty shops. That said, I want to focus on the creations of the brewers at Hopcat. If you want to hear a rundown of their other selections, there are other resources available.

Laura and I started with their Viener Lager, Hopcat's take on a Vienna lager, with extra innuendo free of charge. The smell was sweeter than I anticipated, with pronounced notes of grain. The taste, however, was dryer than the smell let on, letting the hops subdue some of the sweet caramel found in the nose. This is a superb beer and it's obvious why Hopcat has taken to keeping it available regularly.

Crack fries!

Second up was the Black Mamba, a schwarzbier that certainly doesn't mess around. This ended up being Laura's favorite beer today, with a bold, toasted, whole grain flavor. In fact I described it as tasting like whole grain toast. I wanted there to be some more sweet to balance out the roasted flavor, but Laura thought it was perfect the way it was.

My personal favorite beer of the day was, by far, the Dictator Stout. Created as an homage to Cuban coffee, the Dictator Breakfast Stout smells strong, almost abusively so. However, a cuban coffee is a smooth, sweet espresso served with a twist of lemon; there is not really anything heavy or plodding about it. It would not be fair to make its beer namesake the same tired, old, heavy stout. The Dictator, thankfully smooth and creamy on the nitro, is not a tired, heavy beer. The lighter abv (only 4.8%) keeps it easy to drink, while the citrus twist keeps the coffee and sugar falvors in check. This has become my favorite coffee stout and one of my favorite beers ever.

Finally, we ended with Hopcat's popular Hoppapotamus, a light and balanced APA. I've had earlier iterations of the Hoppapotamus before and Jeff and Jake have really matured the beer into something I very much enjoy. The hops impart citrus with grapefruit, but surprisingly there's some complexity in the smell, with malt notes lingering. The taste, playing on the smell, is malty with sweet grapefruit and a salty hop finish.

The Food

Crack fri..

FINE I WILL TALK ABOUT THE CRACK FRIES.

Michigan is very lucky in that its brewpubs double in culinary excellence. Short's has one of the best sandwiches I've ever had. The Walldorff has arguably the best pizza in Michigan. The Vierling has a perfectly grilled whitefish pulled right out of Lake Superior. Hopcat has crack fries. If you go to any internet review site – Yelp, Urban Spoon, Foursquare, Google Reviews – you will see that about half of the people leaving comments are begging you to try the crack fries.

I'll go ahead and let you know that this is not really a tough choice to make. Crack fries are perfectly crispy, perfectly seasoned, perfectly spicy potatoes sliced, beer battered, and fried to perfection. I've been eating them for close to a year now and I have never had a bad batch. To be honest, this is where I usually insert a picture of the mouth watering food, but...I ate them too quick to take a picture. Sorry folks.

The rest of their menu is quite good; I had their burger, which, while simple, was perfectly cooked (I like my ground beef to be pink in the middle, and many restaurants tend to second guess me when I ask for that) and complimented the beer quite well. Their entire appetizer menu is worth a shot; the beerbar cheese is an excellent cold cheese spread (sorry, Founder's, way better than yours) served with staunch fried pita slices that stand up well to the firm cheese. Their mini corn dogs taste better than any fair corn dog I've had, and the choice of horseradish mustard is always a wise choice.

The Hopcat represents a new vision in entertainment for the city; it's a place designed by and for craft beer lovers, offering up locally brewed selections next to favorites from around the state, country and world. It offers an impressive collection of spirits and even a “lawnmower beer” for that “What's the lightest beer you have?” friend who just can't take a craft beer. It serves these beers in a comfortable, laid back environment complete with knowledgeable staff and delicious food. There's no surprise that I consider this a 500 mile brewery; well worth the trip from anywhere in Michigan and easily the most fun place to hang out in the city. Thank you Jeff Williams and Jake Brenner for your originality in your brewing creations and your hospitality, and thank you to Mark Sellers for bringing such a place to Grand Rapids.

To view all photos from our experience at HopCat, please visit our Facebook page.

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Bottled Michigan: Short's Bloody Beer

Short's likes to keep things fresh. Everyone knows and loves their staple beers, but it is their new and experimental tastes that have made a name for the little brewery in the north. The most recent beer I tried is not for everyone: the Bloody Beer.

The beer pours a strong red-copper, with a whole lot of haziness going on. I'm convinced that the haziness, which is thick with small particles that suspend without moving in the copper fluid, are actually pieces of tomato. (this is probably not true.)  The head is thin and off white, colored slightly by the copper hue of the beer itself.

Have you ever had a bloody mary before? Not one of those fruity citrus flavored bloody marys, or one of those “came from a jar behind the bar” bloody marys, but a full blown bloody mary with fresh tomato juice, ground black pepper, and a hint of pickle? If you have, then I probably don't need to explain how the Short's Bloody beer smells. The sweet tanginess of the tomato hits the nose first, followed by a sharp pepper smell that lets you know it hasn't just gone bad.

The flavor is confusing and unique; this certainly isn't a beer for everyone. The tomato and pepper flavors are pronounced, and flow to the back of the throat smoothly. This is a very smooth textured beer, which is balanced out by the pepper flavor. It really does taste like a thick bloody mary with a solid beer kick. If you dumped your sidecar into the last half of your Sunday nooner, it might taste very similar to this beer.

(Others may point out that another beverage, Chelada, already fills this niche. I have never had Chelada, so I cannot comment. But yeah, that sounds about right.)

The beer stands out as as a real winner for me, but I can see where it may have polarizing effects. If the thought of pepper beers revolt you, or the thought of tangy tomato in your beer revolts you, maybe don't try this. However, this beer has a lot in common with Short's Nicie Spicie beer, but tangy/spicy instead of sweet/spicy. I'd recommend it to anyone who likes bloody marys.  

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