Beer gets scrappy. Breweries can brew at any time of the year and plan their production schedule for a Holiday bottle blitz. In all but Germany, brewers can toss in chocolate, cinnamon, frankinsense, or myrh to their hearts’ desire. Wine Enthusiasts’ celebration of a “holiday” Cab with a “chocolaty finish” can’t possibly go toe-to-toe with Port Brewing’s coco nib boosted Santa’s Little Helper. Beer labeling enables festive and seasonal creativity that even your neighborhood home-decorating crone would be proud of. Names like Snowblower Ale, Santa’s Butt Porter, Hollidaze, and Mad Elf are kitschy enough to make any underage child point, giggle, and pressure dad to “buy that one”. It’s a one round knockout. Beer is the Muhammad Ali to wine’s Liston.  Allow a few of our holiday picks to bob and weave their way into your fridge this Christmas.

• Samuel Smith’s Yorkshire Stingo
• Deschutes Jubelale
• Firestone Walker’s Velvet Merlin
• St. Bernardus Christmas Ale
• Delerium Noel

Electric Football inventor Norman Sas, with Pete Rozelle

If you are in the same demographic range as Hooch & Hops then you might have grown up with Electric Football.  Not to brag, but I was nasty from downtown on the FG’s.  The Buffalo Bills ‘Electric Company,’ featuring O.J. Simpson was one of the earl teams.  It is then with a heavy heart that we note the passing of Norman Sas, inventor of Electric football.  The reason were featuring it on a beer blog is the games vital role in the creation in one of the best IPA’s in the country.  Sam Calagione and Dogfish Head Beer used the playing field from the game to shake the hops into the test batches of what turned out to be 90 Minute IPA.  Continual dry hopping reached a whole new level.  So, the next time you drink a 90 take a minute to remember the man who created one of the all time great games.

The result of 90 minutes of continual hopping thanks to Electric Football

Pat

American Whiskey Trail

I found this gem of a website while I was looking for possible Hooch & Hops road trips.  We have our very own American Whiskey Trails that run through Kentucky and Tennessee (for operating distilleries).  This trail consists of the following distilleries:  Jim Beam, Maker’s Mark, Jack Daniels, Barton Brands, Woodford Reserve, and George Dickel.

A second trail consists of historical distilleries starting at the Fraunces Tavern Museum in New York, going through the George Washington Distillery Museum at Mount Vernon, VA, and ending at the Oscar Getz Museum in Bardstown, KY.

The gateway to the American Whiskey Trail is the newly reconstructed George Washington Distillery.  This is the only site in the US where you can see 18th century distilling demonstrated from the seed to the bottle.  As if we needed another reason to think that George Washington was an awesome President.

Cheers,

Pat

George Washington Distillery

Allagash White: A Great Intro Craft Beer

Here at Hooch & Hops we strive to help you take your drinking to the next rung on the evolutionary ladder.  Gone are the days of cheap plastic bottles of booze and 30 packs of beer that cost $9.99.  Hooch & Hops (part of the Cosby Sweaters Network) is here to talk to you about high quality craft beer and distilled spirits in an unpretentious manner.  Words like “bottle conditioned” and “mixology” will become part of your everyday drinking lexicon.

Series such as Hooch & Hops 101 will introduce ways in which you can move towards a higher quality of drinking.  This first post in our Hooch & Hops 101 series focuses on the transition from drinking the Big 3 beers to microbeers.  Keep an eye out for future Hooch & Hops 101 posts focusing on small batch distilled spirits.

Our Hooch & Hops writer Mark takes a great deal of pride in his track record of converting dedicated macrobrew drinkers into ravenous microbrew drinkers.  He and his wife often set up camp directly in front of the taps at their local watering hole with the intention of striking up friendly chatter with folks who are ordering beers from the Big Three.  Just this past week he intercepted a gentleman ordering a Shocktop and convinced him to try an Allagash White.  He loved it (even without the orange slice).

Mark and his wife have a tried and true logic they use when trying to convert people to craft beer:  You tell me what macrobrew you like and I will suggest to you a craft beer you will love.  The key points Mark takes into consideration when choosing microbrews for novice craft drinkers are:

1. Higher ABV’s-  Especially with drinkers in their mid-20′s, being able to have fewer beers and catch a light buzz goes a long ways.
2. Better flavor-  Being able to enjoy a beer after its been sitting for 10 minutes and is no longer freezing cold says a lot about a beer.  Quality beer should be drunk near cellar temperatures so you can enjoy the complexity of the flavors and aromas.
3. Local, local, local-  Support your local brewers!  Visit the folks who make the beer!  This creates a familiarity and loyalty with the people who make your beer.  This is the backbone of the craft movement.
4. Versatility/Functionality- Name me a food,  a holiday, or a celebration and I’ll pick you a beer to go with it.  Bacon wrapped scallops?  Try a Sierra Nevada Summerfest Pils.  Grandpa’s 80th birthday?  Try an Old Leghumper Porter from Thirsty Dog.
   

   This porter's smooth taste and great label will take Gramps back to the good ol' days.

   Keep checking in with Hooch & Hops for info on high quality hooch and fine craft beer.  We will be review new drinks, live tweeting for various beerfests, and post relevant articles and commentary on our Facebook site.  If you have any comments, recommendations, or questions you can always fire off a tweet to @hoochandhops or hit us up on Facebook.

   Cheers,

   Hooch & Hops

Let’s see if you can pour with this much discipline after your 3rd or 4th round.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Coors Light Iced T comes from our friends at the Molson Coors Brewing Company (via this Cosby Sweaters’ link, thanks guys).  This drink is described as a “citrus-like, iced tea flavored beer with 4% alcohol and no caffeine.”  Seriously?  4% Abv and no caffeine?  At least Four Loko had the business sense to make their drink an over the top abomination of alcohol and caffeine.

When I see an item like this hit the market, questions like “How could they do this to America?” and “Why, God why?” quickly give way to a more thoughtful analysis of what is really at play here.  According to the Brewers Association, craft beer sales were up by 11% (by volume) and 12% (by dollars) in 2010.  Meanwhile, total US beer sales by volume were down 1% in 2010.  Considering that craft beer sales only account for less than 5% of total beer sales, this tells you that the big boys have not had the strong numbers that the craft market has been experiencing.

Even Molson Coors CEO Peter Swinburn hints (in the April 2012 issue of Smart Money magazine) that sales of Coors light are probably not going to be increasing anytime soon.  This is where crap gimmicks like Coors Light Iced T come into play.  The big boys start throwing things like “Iced T Beer”, “Cold Activated”, and whatever that crazy-ass Miller Lite Vortex bottle is at the consumer in the hopes that we do not notice that the product in the bottle is lacking.

As a former drinker of Natural Lite, Bud Light, and the entire Genesee Brewery family of beers, I know how hard it is to go back to the mass produced beers once you have tasted all of the amazing craft beers we now have access to.  Once that cat is out of the bag it is tough to get it back in.  Look around at the bars in your town.  Do you see what I see?  Bars are filling their tap lines with more and more high quality beers from craft breweries.  I have even seen establishments using their lack of Bud Light and Coors Light taps as an advertising opportunity.  Are we now seeing a larger shift away from the big boys as more and more young drinkers’ eyes are opened to the potential of craft brewing?  There has got to be a graduate thesis in here somewhere.

I apologize for the somewhat ranty nature of this post but as you can probably tell, I kind of get worked up about these topics.  If I didn’t, I would not have had to create a list in the first place.

Cheers,

Pat

Eight Facts You Didn’t Know about Beer & Health by The Beer Fox

The Beer Fox (great name) summarizes the work of eight different scientists from around the world whose research all point to the same conclusion:  Beer is good for you and if everyone in the world drank beer the world would be a better place.

• 

  This Bicep Brought to you by Beer

  Beer, when drunk in moderation, can help bolster the cardiovascular system.

• Beer is good for women in that it can help maintain bone density and enhances the antioxidant properties in breast milk.
• Beer is good for your brain and helps ward off cognitive problems as you age.
• The “Beer Belly” is not caused by beer.  That is to say it is not solely caused by beer.  Lifestyle and general eating habits have more to do with the development of your gut than whether or not you tip back a few brews.
• My absolute favorite health benefit is that drinking a beer following a workout can actually help you re-hydrate.  I knew there had to be a reason why drinking a beer in the shower after football practice in college felt so good.

Basically, the article boils down to the fact that if you drink good beer in moderation, you will live a healthy life and be a generally awesome person.  Drink well.

Cheers,

Pat

The brewer of Duvel and Maredsous beer said all of its brands except Bel Pils showed improvement in the quarter.

It said it was confident of posting further growth in turnover and operating profit in 2011, reiterating the outlook it gave at the time of its full-year results.

However it said that its results in the first quarter were negatively influenced by the weak dollar.