RICE VIABLE BEER COMPONENT!

This just in - rice actually can be used to make tasty beer. The people at the megabeer giants don't know this. They think rice is just a cheap alternative to barley, using it by the ton to make terrible beer because most Americans don't care otherwise. I've actually seen some commercial - I think from, Bud - touting rice as the key to "exceptional smoothness." Wow. That's just about as hilarious as Miller Lite trying to pass of "triple hops brewed" as meaningful or pretending that anyone drinks light beer for the flavor. Why don't all the domestic macrobrews just base their commercials on the truth - their beer is popular because it's cheap and it gets you drunk. My beer commercial would go something like this:

(A crowded bar in a hip urban setting. A ridiculously hot female bartender hands four bottles of Miller Lite to an average-looking white guy in his late 20s)
Guy 1: Keep the change! Miller Lite is cheap enough that I can afford to tip!
(he hands a bottle to his friend, another average white male, and one bottle each to two ridiculously hot girls in their early 20s)
Girl 1: Another Miller Lite! I think this makes number 14 for the night and I still don't feel full!
Girl 2: Thanks! We're so glad we met you guys here tonight. You're both soooo sexy. We didn't think so at first, but now we think you're like super hot.
Guy 2: Alright!
Girl 1: Yes! We're totally drunk enough to sleep with you now!
Guy 2: Alright!
Girl 2: (throws up on herself a little and everyone cheers)
All: (raising bottles in a toast) Thanks Miller Lite!

So yeah, rice in a beer doesn't impress me much.

Enter Trade Winds Thai Basil, an interesting concoction from The Bruery that uses rice in place of candi sugar in its mash. The mash is the part of beer making where sugars are extracted from grains to feed the yeast that lives in the beer and makes alcohol. The more sugar, the better fed the yeast will be and the more alcohol they will produce. SCIENCE! Extracting the sugars is done by soaking the grains in hot water, which also absorbs flavor from the grains - sort of the way your milk still tastes like Cheerios after all the cereal is gone. If you've ever been around a brewing operation, you know that the mash smells great and the leftover grains are delightful to eat. Think oatmeal vs. cooked rice and it's easy to see the difference in flavor between barley mash and rice mash.

Candi sugar is a popular ingredient in fancier, higher alcohol beers, but I'm not a big fan because it usually results in an overpowering sweetness that just doesn't do it for me. Trade Winds didn't have this unpleasant taste, and I believe the rice created a very smooth and well-rounded backdrop for the more interesting ingredients to shine against. The not-so-subtle but in no way overbearing ginger flavor made it a refreshing palette cleanser. This is a niche beer, and not something I would drink every day, but it was an interesting taste and totally worth investigating. It will also be my beer of choice next time I enjoy a BYO sushi restaurant. Mmmm sushi...

Fantome is nothing to boo! Foodery is!

Some beers are better than others. Yuengling Lager is better than Sam Adams Lager. Magic Hat #9 is better than Lowenbrau. Warm, salty piss is better than Budweiser (a fair analogy, since neither are actually beer).

Other beers are better than most - Saison Dupont, Guinness (don't let its bandwagon popularity turn you off - a good pint of the black stuff is still a treat), most of the stuff I've had from Dogfish Head. And then there are beers that are just on a level of their own - Dupont's Biere de Miel, for example, and possibly DFH's Theobroma (more testing required).

And then there's Fantome. At $24 for a 750ml bottle from the Foodery, I was fully prepared to be let down. Instead, I was elated. A note about pricing - I split the cost with my buddy Len of Philabeer, and from what I hear $24 at the Foodery translates to about $14 anywhere else. But more on the Foodery in a bit. Fantome turned out to be the kind of beer that changes my perception of a genre. It declares itself a saison, but it's unlike any other saison I've tasted. It had all the hop presence of a well-crafted farmhouse ale with just enough sour cheese funk to make my nipples hard. I think this was mostly because I'm a little lactarded and my body was fooled into bracing for the inevitable consequence of dairy consumption, but I was also pretty excited.

This was one of those beers where I regretted not having a second bottle handy the moment I took my first sip, and you should definitely spook up a bottle of it for yourself as soon as possible. See what I did there? Fantome - spook? HA! There was a lot going on in the glass, but it was blended and balanced perfectly. This could be a great introduction to the sour beer world, a stepping stone to training your palette for things like Oude Gueuze and some of the other exceptionally tart lambics. But to think of this beer solely as training wheels would be foolish, like thinking of Florida as anything other than America's Penis or believing the New York Yankees don't have sex with one another before, during, and after their games. Let's just say that dugout floor alternates between sticky and slippery with alarming alacrity.

As for the Foodery, this was my first trip there and I hope never to return. After all the hype I've heard, I was expecting to be blown away. I was not. They have a decent selection, but they are not the Beer Mecca people make them out to be. Realistically, they're about on-par with my local Wegmans but about 50% more expensive. Yippee. I was at the Northern Liberties location, but I don't think it would be much different at the original. The only reason to be impressed by the Foodery is if you've never been to a good beer store. Try Abe's in Bethlehem or State Line down in Maryland if you want to know what a true Beer Mecca looks like. Shit, just try a Wegman's. Anything but Foodery. Some of my most extreme beer geek friends are actively boycotting the Foodery, which is a good way to encourage lower prices and something I support fully. I also just like the idea of boycotting things in general, so take me with a grain of salt. Then boycott salt and grains in general. What have they done for you lately? UP WITH THE WORKING CLASS!

But in all honesty - serious beer nerds need to visit State Line. I wanted to weep the first time I went there. Weep and set up a small living space in their back room. Here's the link to their Belgian selections. If you click that link, you'll see 100 varieties of beer, arranged alphabetically and cutting off at Corsendonk. Care to guess how many hundreds of varieties they have? And remember, that's just their Belgian selection. They've also got just as much wine variety, if not more, in case you are a pussy.

And if you go, tell them Man Vs. Beer sent you. They'll have no idea what you're talking about. Then buy a bottle of Fantome for $16 and tell the Foodery to eat its own ass.

Sacrifice can be a good thing

Recently, I got drunk accidentally. This sort of thing happens, especially when you skip dinner in order to pick up a keg of Sly Fox's delicious Helles lager for a party. What starts as a relatively refined housewarming party slowly devolves into a Lady Gaga-fueled dance mash with a slideshow of hazy half memories in between. Of those hazy memories, one emerges clearly: Dogfish Head's Theobroma.

Theobroma follows in the Midas Touch tradition of "Hey scientist, analyze the residue of ancient beer we found on this impossibly old clay pot so we can remake it and get hammered." This time the recipe came from some pottery fragments found in Honduras. Theobroma translates to 'food of the gods' and is a rightful name for this brew. The recipe uses Aztec cocoa powder and cocoa nibs, honey, chilies, and annatto, whatever the hell that is. The important thing to notice here is the heavy use of chocolate, and the spicy addition of ancho chilies. According to the folks at the brewery, this recipe is the earliest known chocolate/alcohol drink, so all you folks who celebrate the holidays by adding a shot to your hot chocolate and all you drunks who mix your Nestle Qwick with vodka can thank these industrious Aztecs. Even though I'm pretty sure ancient Honduras was Mayan territory...

Anyway, the beer itself is dark and enticing, and while I don't recall too much (and haven't been to a beer store fancy enough to pick up a second bottle, yet) I remember the flavor clearly. There is a chocolate/honey sweetness that fades into a subtle hot chili burn. It reminded me very much of the "hot chocolate" ice cream available at the outstanding beer bistro Theresa's Next Door in Wayne, PA, where chocolate ice cream is mixed with cayenne pepper. Have some, it's unbelievable. And try some of their several hundred beers. Theobroma's chocolate/hot flavors weren't as pronounced as the ice cream, but they were what demanded my attention from the mix of goodness going on in my glass. Hot and sweet work well together - just look at any of the great hot candies available at your local bodega. Seriously - expand your freaking horizons already.

According to my understanding of Aztec sacrifice practices, which come largely from things I heard a long time ago and other things I've made up, the person to be sacrificed was treated pretty much as a god for a week or so leading up to the big day. Part of this would be the sacrifice getting to drink until they could drink no more, then flipping them over and pouring booze into their butt holes so the good times didn't have to stop. The Aztecs knew how to party. Not only did they invent alcoholic chocolate drinks, they invented the frat culture. Maybe it was all the Lady Gaga that came to play late night, but you could pour a bottle of this stuff up my ass any time. I'd much rather drink it, but hey, who's to argue with the Aztecs? Right - the Spanish missionaries.