The Art of a Beer Variety Pack

When I buy a seasonal multi-pack, I don’t want a new beer wedged among three or more that I'm already tired of. I want something different.

Having a variety pack of a brewer’s flagship beers is fine. But a seasonal variety pack should be something else. America’s largest maker of craft beers recently revamped its long-running seasonal 12-pack lineup, cutting it from six different beers to four yet keeping flagships and well-worn seasonals in the pack. I haven’t seen a pack I’ve wanted in Friday since because too much of that beer will sit around. I don’t think of Boston Lager as a beer for all seasons (whoops).

Cleveland’s Great Lakes brewery gets how to diversify the variety pack. For their spring pack, which offers three bottles of each of four beers suiting spring. If I want a variety 12-pack of Great Lakes four flagship brews (Dortmunder Gold, Elliot Ness Lager, Burning River Pale Ale, Edmund Fitzgerald Porter), they already sell one.

Spring’s lighter, festive seasonals are not meant for aging, and the pack reflects that. There’s a nod to hopheads, a shout-out for Belgian beer fans and a few for everyone. I hope the pack might include Grassroots Ale, a saison with locally grown herbs and honey. But if I remember my friends’ reactions correctly, I alone liked.

Great Lakes throws a bone to long-time drinkers with an old favorite. The pack's best-known beer is Holy Moses White Ale, which the brewery retired from year-round production. It’s a perfumed, Belgian-style white with plenty of coriander and tropical fruit notes.

Next comes Lawn-Seat Kolsch, a bubbly beer built for hot days. It’s standard kolsch, albeit with Great Lakes’ usual quality, light-bodied and with notably bitter hop finish. High Striker Single is a light Belgian ale, along the lines of a blonde. It’s quite estery with banana-orange tones and coriander flourishes. Like the rest, it excels at refreshing.

With a nod to Superman's Cleveland-based creators, Truth, Justice and the American Ale falls under the “hoppy session ale” moniker but still intrigues. Using Simcoe, Cascade and Mosaic hopes, The ale provides an intense hop display for a beer clocking in below 5 percent ABV. Light on the malts for an American pale ale, these hops provide the necessary touches of fruit bitterness and piney freshness to go leaps and bounds over many session IPAs. I

n just four beers Great Lakes takes us through an array of flavors and aromas. Combining one old favorite with a few newer experiments is the perfect blend of beers for the casual drinker or the old Great Lakes fan stuck in a state where they don’t distribute.

New Nashville Favorites: Exclusive Taps at Butchertown Hall

Every new watering hole opening in Nashville touts its craft beer lineup. There are plenty of places around town that tap a rare keg or two. Standing out can be a tough proposition.In the rapidly changing Germantown neighborhood, Butchertown Hall has put a different spin on its beer offerings. Along with an intimidating number of craft taps, the new restaurant can boast its Private Selection, a series of Tennessee craft beers made specifically for Butchertown Hall.

I have not tasted them all (not sure if there’s a flight available, but there should be), but what I’ve tasted has been pretty special. If you’ve got time for one and feel like hops, go with Simcoe. Single-hop IPAs are still percolating as a trend but they are always worth seeking out. Jackelope’s Simcoe IPA uses the fragrant, piney hop exclusively, and a magnificent, drinkable hoppy beer emerged.

It isn’t the Private Selection's only palate challenger. Chattanooga Brewing’s Pepper Pils cries out for food pairing, and cry out you will if you tackle it solo. The pepper in question is the always-intense habanero, which fits surprisingly well with the clean, sharp hops and malts of a pilsner. For so intense a pepper burst, the habanero flavor does not linger as badly as I expected. The vegetable paella helped immensely.

Served in a chalice as a nod to its Belgian roots, Cool Springs Brewery Golden Ale provided a solid citrus-tropical fruit flavor with a dry, estery finish with hints of banana.

At first sniff, Blackstone Weizen Bock displays its sweet and smoky textures. The wheat malt imparts banana-clove-orange notes that mesh surprisingly well with the strong bock flavors like molasses and dates. Despite the Nashville heat, it was quite refreshing for a strong dark lager.

The Private Selection also includes Black Abbey’s oatmeal altbier, Czann’s dunkelweiss and Little Harpeth’s Bison Bock Vienna Lager. I’m sure I’ll catch up in future visits.

While the signature beers are a strong hook, the rest of Butchertown’s tap selection stands out for bold and sometimes rare choices. Anytime you can get Saison de Pipaix, grab a pour – it’s an otherworldly tart saison.

I went for Hitachino Nest Anbai Wheat. Japan's finest brewer makes a world-class white ale and an enticing ginger ale (the alcoholic kind). Anbai translates to “salty plum” and that hits the center of its flavor profile. A Japanese spin on the German gose style (salted, slightly sour wheat), Anbai Wheat has a flavor intensity beyond most gose ales. The use of Japanese green sour plums and sea salt kicks all the gose attributes up a few notches.

I cannot forget the food, since it is Butchertown's main attraction.  A la carte tacos are a delight – lamb, Portobello, pork or chicken all hit the mark. Don’t skip the street corn paired with sour cream and cilantro. From burgers to homemade sausages to the vegetable paella, it’s a solid menu with myriad food and drink pairings.

The extensive and exclusive taps draw beer lovers like myself, but Butchertown fosters a good atmosphere for quaffing a few craft beers over a taco or plate of something smoked.

New Nashville Favorites: Craft Beer Proliferation

I don’t write about the local beer scene as much as I could. The local media and alternative press tend to gush about it, acting as though it’s the first town in America to undergo a craft beer renaissance. It might not be the 71st. Not every beer needs deification.

But the new beer is rising. I come not to bury those I don’t fancy or those not interested in canning or bottling. I can only praise those that snared my taste buds lately.

 For many years I have quickly anointed Jackelope Brewing's Love Birds as Nashville’s best fruit/wheat beer. The strawberry-raspberry a great beer, easily the best seasonal to come from Jackelope. My only gripe is that it’s a year-round lineup.

This summer, Love Birds got some fruit beer competition. Blackstone began bottling Strawberry Picnic, a fruit-rich variation of its Picnic summer ale. The ants on the label won’t be the only creatures clamoring for Strawberry Picnic. It’s cloudy because Blackstone used actual strawberries, the beer an additional touch of earthy character to the fruit.

Innovation isn't restricted to the city itself.  Because of its location in suburban Williamson County, Cool Springs Brewery often gets overlooked on the Nashville brewery spectrum. They have been bottling such delights as a Mosaic-hopped saison, a mango-infused IPA and several other big IPAs.

None of its IPAs can exceed the high mark set by Hoppy Balboa, a quad IPA brewed for CSB’s fifth anniversary. This IPA crosses strength (18.4 percent ABV) and flavor frontiers. Thanks to heaps of Citra, Amarillo, Centennial and Columbus hops, Balboa radiates some serious citrus, especially tangerine and apricot, in addition to the expected pine needle and resin notes. It drinks way lighter than anything this strong should, and the black pepper backdrop never grows obnoxious.

CSB is helping to pin Nashville on the IPA map (it has a many miles to go, It City people - deal with it). We’ve also been enjoying the fruits of Yazoo’s sour imprint, Embrace the Funk. This typically involves getting an e-mail about a bottle release, standing in line for an hour and leaving with a lot of wild and sour beer. There are few Yazoo releases for which I won’t brave those lines.

The latest batch included Delicieux, a hopped wild ale that runs very close to the venerable Trappist ale Orval, a blueberry wild ale (Funky Blue Persuasion) and Lignage a Trois. While trying to uncap Funky Blue through its unnecessary wax seal, the neck broke on the bottle. I still drank it, but that dampened the experience, especially on a $25 beer.

 Released in  late 2014,  Lignage a Trois had no such problems ( I chipped away all the wax I could before uncapping).  proved to be a revelation. The 100 percent brettanomyces red ales grows more complex through a number of flourishes. Aged on raspberries in barrels that at different times held Tennessee whiskey and red wine, Lignage a Trois is a force, pushing the limits of what red ale can be. An assertive barrel influence opens some new flavor horizons. Like Russian River Brewing before it, Yazoo pairs the beer style and barrel with an appropriate fruit that amplified the best qualities of the malts and wild yeast.

There are plenty of other fine brewers around Nashville. No matter what you like, craft beer has reached a point where you cannot possibly taste everything. Nashville’s booming beer market requires a little more selectivity but every brewery I encounter will get a few chances before I disregard them completely. With the brewers above, you should never hesitate.

How to Premier a Beer (Bearded Isis Nashville Debut)

Despite all the assertions that the craft beer market still has room to grow, those of us who came to age when Sam Adams and a few regional brews made up the entire craft beer market in the grocery aisle still marvel at the choices. The options proliferate with every trip down the beer aisle.

With the American craft brew market exploding and breweries numbers finally nearing pre-Prohibition heights, it's getting harder for a new brewer to stand out from the pack. In a major metro like Nashville, where more than a dozen local brewers compete for tap and shelf space.

Brewers need to step out, make splashes in the local market, not ripples. They have to go beyond "brown, blonde, pale and wheat" to show some early ingenuity. That could prove tough, since many brewers have quality issues to resolve. Some debut before the recipes have been really tested (it's a more common problem all the time).

With its first public pour, Bearded Iris Brewing showed it has worked out the kinks with one mighty beer. The brewery's name comes from Tennessee state flower and not the product of some drug-induced word association. The new Nashville brewery debuted at the Hop Stop, an East Nashville beer bar. Nancy and I had never seen the place so crowded. Every seat was taken and a dense crowd ringed the L-shaped bar.

Bearded Iris stepped up with Habit, their double IPA. While common in most markets, screwy alcohol laws leave Nashville bereft of big IPA options. Cool Springs Brewery is the only brewery bottling high-gravity IPA; I'm sure a few small batches that have been poured at local taprooms.

To my taste  buds, the best Southern double IPA hails from Birmingham, Good People Brewing's Snake Handler, which has attained a cult following (it was just recently introduced to Tennessee).  So double IPA offers the right Nashville brewery a niche it can claim.

Habit's flavor closely resembled Great Lakes Brewery's wonderful Chillwave Double IPA, which is high praise, not a complaint. The big nose strikes quickly with pine needles, resin, grapefruit, orange and tangerine. For  7.5 percent ABV beer, Habit is light and nimble, letting the hops do the grunt work. The malt backbone is just that, giving Habit a framework for the massive hop character to fill in. 

After the Bearded Iris guys and Hop Stop staff poured everyone a Habit, they did a toast (ours were half-gone by then). A locally made double IPA as delicious as Habit could be habit-performing (thanks, thanks, I'm here all week).

Of course Habit could be habit-forming. The combination of Simcoe, Citra and Amarillo hops produces a tremendous beer.

A beer premier needs a bold beer, and Bearded Iris delivered. They had to go big with an event like this -- if the debut were a pedestrian beer style, the crowd would not have been half as thick. No one who was there would forget that experience. it builds in an audience when the taproom opens. It makes Bearded Iris more enticing when perusing the beer menu elsewhere in Middle Tennessee.

The brewery next door

The brewery around the corner is something I’ve long awaited in Nashville. I’ve had a few false starts yet finally, a contender has emerged. Given its name, I would not have imagined the Honky Tonk Brewery would be the one. Since the brewery and its taproom lie within walking distance of work, it’s the easy winner.

After two visits, it’s time to say a few words about the brewery. While I have covered most of metro Nashville's brewing hubs, I’m still behind on a few taproom visits (one of these days, Tennessee Brew Works).

Finding Honky Tonk was a fluke on a Friday afternoon. Their address sounded familiar. A quick Internet search revealed I could almost see the brewery from my office window. The taproom is relatively Spartan with limited hours (Friday nights and Saturday afternoons) but the staff is friendly and happy to talk beer.

At present, Honky Tonk pours four beers – a wheat, an amber, IPA and a Wheat IPA. The wheat came out as a clear favorite, bright, easy and with plenty of fruit complexity (pear, lemon, orange, even a spritz of pineapple). It’s definitely an American-style spin on wheat, with a noticeable hop sizzle late on the palate. The amber falls on the brown ale spectrum, with creamy notes of chocolate and nuts. The IPA announces its Pacific Northwest hops quickly. Good straightforward local West Coast IPA is something we don’t get enough in Music City. The Wheat IPA blends the other two ales and is different enough from the standard IPA to warrant a good mention.

During my first visit, the owner was kind enough to take me through his production facility. It might be back in an office development, away from the trendier spots home to new breweries. As Honky Tonk grows, the amount of space available to the nascent brewery will serve it well.

After years in the happy hour wilderness (the only bar of any quality nearby is in a busy hotel), having craft brew in easy reach is a refreshing change.

Down on the Corner: West Seattle Brewing Company

In May, when my sister Jenny and I return from a camping trip to Deception Pass, we passed a new brewery around the corner from my sister’s apartment.

Breweries around the corner have always treated me well, from Belgrade’s Madison River Brewing (Montana) to Albuquerque’s Marble Brewing to Belmont Brewing (Long Beach, Calif.).

When the opportunity presented itself, I wandered over to WSBC. This nano-brewery runs on small batches of its own brews and a handful of guest taps available on a Saturday evening. The owner tended bar and I chatted with his brother, who joined in bartending once the crowds swelled later in the day.

The brewery itself was relatively small, built in a former convenience store space. The brewers kept the wall of coolers from the convenience store and added a nice touch by placing the kegs behind the clear glass. At one point, brew tanks behind clear glass became a standard brewpub flourish. These guys put the kegs in view, a good innovation. When they removed the drop ceiling, they uncovered massive cedar support beams, another facet which gave the brewery a different feel. 

I started with the Tripel, because it’s not a style every brewery does well. WSBC did just fine, acquitting itself with large quantities of coriander, plenty of dry, biscuity pale malts and flavors of peach, apricot and orange inflected with the black pepper of high alcohol content.

Up next was Road Rage Red, mostly on recommendation of the owner’s brother. Unlike many strong reds, Road Rage had Centennial and other rich, oily hops that did not overpower the malts. This was hoppy red but still balanced red; hops did not run wild in this ale. I closed with House IPA ran 8 percent alcohol, a little strong for an everyday beer. But it was earthy, hoppy and not a palate scorcher.

While disappointed with the lack of stickers, I admired the nano-brewery's chops and saw immense potential for a community gathering place. Brewing strong, challenging beers definitely helps furnish that atmosphere.

Nashville's GuildFest Pours a Little Brewing Gold

One of many empty glasses at sunset

Despite the glut of beer festivals pouring every weekend in Nashville, years had passed since Nancy and I last attended one. Too often, the festivals turn into “the place to be” and tickets get gobbled up by the trendy. These days, I have no desire to fight that fight. Nancy and I returned to the festival scene with GuildFest, the inaugural beer festival from the Tennessee Brewers Guild, an umbrella group formed to update many of the state’s arcane beer laws.

Our experience in other states brewer association festivals led us to GuildFest, which featured only Tennessee craft brewers, many new to us. The fest brought together nearly two dozen breweries, from one-man shops to established Nashville players like Yazoo, Blackstone and Jackalope. There were some absences, but the festival provided a solid cross-section of brewers and offered a chance to sample brews from Clarksville, Chattanooga, Memphis and Knoxville.

With the Nashville skyline as a backdrop, the festival filled up the “backyard” of Little Harpeth’s brewery lot in an overlooked industrial area north of downtown. The brewer holds bluegrass nights here, and it seemed like a good space for such an event. Representatives from the M.L. Rose handed out beer koozies to keep those tasting glasses from feeling too cold, a nice perk when the night turned blustery. This intrepid beer lover appreciated not having to jot down tasting notes with numb hands.

The selections leaned strongly toward fall and winter seasonal, not surprising for an early November beer festival. With some of the new brewers, it was a little hard to grasp whether they were pouring flagship beers or something new. Tennessee’s restrictions on alcohol by volume also impact what could be served, so nothing high-gravity. But that’s fine – we can only judge what we’re poured. While the results were all over the board, a number of brews outran the field.

The best beer I tasted was Blackstone’s Wet Hop IPA. The man pouring it told me it was the last keg they had. Harvested in Washington’s Yakima Valley and immediately flown to Nashville and brewed, the Citra-hop-based beer was downright beautiful. Earthy with strong notes of pine resin, spruce needles, tangerine and other amplified hop flavors, Wet Hop easily won my Best in Show.

Sparta-based Calfkiller had one of the festival’s best lineups. One of the brewery founders told me the coffee was still warm when added to the stout. It was undeniably powerful and gave the stout new complexities. Another revelation was Old Henry, Calfkiller’s J. Henry Mild aged in a Corsair Triple Smoke barrel that had been used five times.

Memphis had three participants – Ghost River, Memphis Made and Wiseacre. Ghost River offered  Midnight Magic and a very light blonde ale. Memphis Made poured a kolsch and an amber ale, while the Wiseacre produced a decent hop-forward IPA and a saison with esters, lemon-citrus aromas and creamy textures.

Murfreesboro represented itself well with its two local brewers. O’Possum’s Brewery and Pub presented well with a Dry Irish Stout and an excellent Dunkelweiss perfect for autumn days. Mayday had its standard red ale (Angry Redhead) alongside Wild Redhead, which spent extra time in a whiskey barrel.

The barrel-aged entries frequently stood out from the pack. Tennessee Brew Works’ Country Roots sweet potato stout turned slightly sour and quite eloquent with some barrel finishing. Black Abbey went the extra mile with its Rum-Barrel Special, an aged version of its Belgian-style mild, Calfkiller’s take on the table beer imbibed by Trappist monks.

I’m forgetting the brewer (a program would have been nice), but one of my last tastes included a sublime sweet potato pumpkin ale. It had great gourd flavors but doubt I could have finished more than the allotted six ounces.

As closing time loomed for the festival, we felt a bit “beered out.” With most of the seasonals on the heavy side, that wasn’t surprising.

Maybe in springtime, the guild can showcase a different side of its members’ brew. Hopefully the attendance numbers can justify another round. For now, I'm glad we got acquainted with some new favorites and rare brews crafted in Nashville.