Wide Awake Buzz

September 27, 2016September 27, 2016 ~ Meg ~ 37 Comments

Week 39 in The Year of Drinking Adventurously. Coffee Beer.

Two more things I love: coffee and beer. (No surprises, right?) This is not about firing up the automatic drip and mixing your Folger’s with your Miller Lite, however. This is a byproduct of the craft-brew movement. Coffee beans are actually used in the brewing process. Either after the initial boil or before going into secondary fermentation, the wort is infused with coffee or coffee beans. The technique seems to vary from brewery to brewery. Any way the combination is achieved, it works beautifully with with some of the darker brews like stout, porter or even dark brown ale. The coffee beer adventure falls on this week because Thursday, September 29 is National Coffee Day.

Our guide had a list of fantastic microbrews to choose from but in my quest to support my local brewery –Freewill, in Bucks County, PA– my coffee beer of choice is their C.O.B. available only in the fall and winter.. Here’s the description from their website:

C.O.B – 8.3% ABV Fall/Winter Release
This unique and complex seasonal ale is free will’s best-selling seasonal. This very strong brown ale has a delicious malty backbone with notes of caramel, brown sugar and graham cracker. Aged on a unique and complex bean that provides additional peppery and molasses like flavors in addition to the classic coffee presence in the aroma and on the palate.

Nice, right? There is one problem with the coffee beer, something I discovered by accident. There is enough caffeine in some of these beers to actually keep you up at night if you’re sensitive to it. However, in the spirit of “write drunk, edit sober” — at least a coffee beer won’t put you to sleep at your keyboard!

I know Lula probably enjoyed this week’s brew, she used to live in the Pacific Northwest- coffee capital of the USA.

Drinking Adventurously Local Edition

July 26, 2016July 26, 2016 ~ Meg ~ 31 Comments

Week 30 in the Year Of Drinking Adventurously. Gueuze.

We’re still “in Belgium” this week for another style of brewed goodness. Gueuze is probably not a style of beer that you’ve heard of. But perhaps you’re familiar with the term lambic? Lambic beer arises from adding fruit to the wort (the boiled ingredients including grains and/or malted extracts and other additions like spices) and letting the flavors permeate the brew. Ingredients like cherries, strawberries, peaches, raspberries add a distinct fruitiness to the finished product. For non-beer drinkers, lambic may be a palatable option. Lambics remind me more of cider than traditional beer. Gueuze is a blend of Lambics. Usually, blending one, two and three year old brews together. The resulting combination facilitates a secondary fermentation and brings on natural carbonation.

For this week’s adventure, I took a short ride to the next town over — Perkasie, Pennsylvania. Literally less than five miles from my house. Freewill Brewing Company has been around for a mere four years, but in that time have carved a niche in not just the local Bucks County and Philadelphia region but have also expanded into New Jersey, Delaware and the Boston area. One of their specialties? Sour beers. Perfect for researching this week and last week’s posts. This past Saturday, I had the opportunity to take the brewery tour and to talk to one of the Brewers, Hannah about the sour beers Freewill specializes in.

The “clean beer” is brewed and fermented on the main floor of the brewery. We aren’t really concerned with these beers this week. Through a winding corridor and down a flight of stairs, we enter the “sour cellar” where the wild yeasts thrive and the dank, funky atmosphere provides the perfect conditions for making sour beer.

Plastic fermenting totes and oak wine barrels

After boiling, the wort goes into huge plastic totes and the pieces of fruit are added. There it sits burping away until such time it gets transferred to an aged oak barrel. For the purpose of sour beer aging, Freewill uses old wine barrels and in some cases, brace yourself, old grappa barrels! There it remains for a year or two.

The sour beer varieties are then bottled and sold for consumption. One of the interesting things about the wild yeast: it self propagates and it evolves. The original strain was purchased several years back from another small brewery and its progeny has been fermenting Freewills’s sours ever since.

Since the varieties on tap in the taproom constantly change, the only sour I sampled this week was When Doves Cry: a Kettle Sour IPA with a 7.5% ABV. A collaboration with Evil Genius for Philly Beer Week, it’s a kettle sour with elderberries, notes of grapefruit and strawberries. Tart and refreshing.

The other beers in my flight were a saison, an American IPA and a spicy habanero Imperial Ale. I brought home some bottles though. The Grape Sour and… made with Pennsylvania peaches “Peachy McPeachface” sour peach ale.

More beers from Belgium next week and if all goes well, another local adventure!

See how it “gueuze” with Lula!

Pucker up, sweeties.

July 19, 2016July 19, 2016 ~ Meg ~ 51 Comments

Week 29 in The Year Of Drinking Adventurously. Sour Beer.

Sour beers are a strange and wonderful thing. The next three weeks of our virtual booze cruise is going to explore Belgium and the “styles” of beer that have been brewed there for centuries before being exported and replicated by the craft beer movement here in the United States. And believe me, if there’s one thing the Belgians do right, it’s beer. Well, and chocolate, too.

Additionally, the author has given me the opportunity to show some hometown love. Monk’s Cafe, a Belgian style bar in Philadelphia, is actually featured in our guide The Year Of Drinking Adventurously. But I’m sticking even closer to home for this post. I’m going to introduce you to the beers produced in my favorite local microbrewery Freewill Brewing in Perkasie, Pennsylvania. New-Header-Yeah

Over the next two weeks, I’m going to use Freewill’s brews as my basis for writing. If I have time, I’m going to interview one of the brewmasters for next week.

Freewill has an excellent selection of sour beers and they even feature them in their tasting room every week on “Sour Sunday.” They don’t have a kitchen so they regularly invite food trucks (restaurants on wheels) from Philadelphia and the surrounding area to come and park outside for the afternoon. It creates a fantastic and festive atmosphere. Ah, but back to the beers…

From their website:

Our lambics are fermented with our house blend of wild yeasts, and beer-friendly bacteria, to create a superior complexity in this sour ale. Notes of lavender, spice, fruity esters, and the general funk one expects from a lambic, give way to a bright, clean, yet sour character.
Our lambics are aged directly on fresh fruit in the traditional fashion, and special attention is given to the old-world process of blending different batches to create the perfect final product. These beers can be aged in the brewery up to several years, and are released at their peak.
As they are bottle conditioned, these lambics can be aged for up to five years to allow for continuing development of flavor.
Flavors include:
Kriek
Key Lime
Peach
Barbera Grape
Pomegranate

Besides the regular sours they have on tap, they have several seasonal beers released in the spring. From their website:

Blood & Guts – 6.1% ABV Spring Release
This black ale fermented with our own sour culture, on top of second-use cherries, in the traditional style of a kriek lambic is a Free Will original. Notes of chocolate, and a mild roasty character are combined with the funk and complexity of wild yeast, and balanced by a clean sour note that follows you through the finish, where the cherry character shines through. Pair this beer with korean bbq or rich creamy pasta dishes.

Whit – 4.7% ABV
Spring Release
A sour ale brewed with cranberries. This beer’s light bready malt character serves as an undertone to fruity, lavender, and herbal notes created by our own sour culture. The cranberry gives a subtle note in both the aroma and taste of this dry and complex ale. Pair this beer with swordfish, or fried chicken (a Free Will lunch time favorite).

Cuvee Aigre – 7.0% ABV
A mature oak-aged sour ale with prominent flavors of white grape, dried fruit, and a slight vanilla finish. Tart and refreshing.

Over time, I’ve sampled all the regular sours but the Key Lime. The Barbera Grape is my favorite. If you aren’t a beer aficionado, lambic and sour beer might be a good introduction. I would compare them more closely to cider than traditional beer. The fruit overtones are unmistakeable. And with crisp carbonation, light body they are a perfect refreshing drink for the summer. So my mission this week is to spend some time with the brew masters, sample some of the season releases and have a little more to share with you next week!

And please visit Lula to see how she enjoyed her beer.