Drie Fonteinen Brewery: Oude Kriek

Drie Fonteinen is one of the traditional lambic brewers/blenders out of Belgium.  They are located near Brussels in Beersel, BE.  Gueuze is produced by blending aged and young lambic.  Kriek is similar, except that cherries are included.  This 375ml beauty is incredibly tart and sour, while still being drinkable and interesting!  I love this beer and always buy it when I see it on the shelves, even though it is not a cheap purchase.

#PROPERGLASSWARE

It should come as no surprise that I am a huge fan of craft beer.  Something that I think is extremely important to tasting beer is the use of a glass.  Many beer drinkers go straight from the can or bottle, but this is a complete rookie mistake.  Beer is meant to be poured out of its container and into a glass, regardless of what John Kimmich says about Heady Topper.  #PROPERGLASSWARE is a bit of a meme in the beer trading/beer geek/untapped/twitter universe, that refers to drinking the beer out of the brewery's or even the specific beer's specialty glass (see above).  I don't get into quite that level, as my collection is still relatively small, though my wife and limited cabinet space disagree!

The workhorse for higher gravity beers is the tulip.  This can come as a much like a snifter or a little bit skinnier with a dip in the middle.  I have pictured both pieces below.  I generally use this kind of a glass for almost all of my beers, it is versatile and handsome.

Oktoberfest Bier Mug - This type of glass is typically oversized and perfect for mass quantities of lager or festbier.  These beers are very sessionable and designed for the biggest beer session of them all Octoberfest!

A variation of this style is "Das Boot" made popular by the movie "Beerfest," if you haven't seen it check out below!

The glass that most people will be familiar with is the pint.  This typically comes in a 16 oz format and is great for relatively sessionable beers and is referred to as a shaker pint.  This glass is usually very cheap, so feel free to grab a bunch from different breweries when you visit.

It's less popular, but equally useful brother is called the Nonic Pint Glass.  It features a notch at the top and is typically sized for a true English pint, 20 ounces.  This is ideal for a lower ABV brew, particularly a real or cask ale poured on tap.  

A goblet is perfect if you are pouring a high ABV Belgian brew like a tripel or quad.  These beers have a great yeast character, and this glass allows you to take a very deep smell of these unique beers.

Gueuze/Lambic glasses are popular for the sour styles originating out of Belgium.  The wild ale train is just getting started, and as they become more popular, the quality sours become more expensive to buy or even impossible in the case of Cantillon these days.  This glass works almost like a flute for Champagne.

Continuing with the stemware trend, I am will move to the oversized wine glass.  You can use a regular wine glass in a pinch, but they are typically sized for smaller beers.  This works similar to a tulip, but usually the stem is much more elongated.  This makes for a more elegant experience.  My favorite beers for this style glass are saisons and other farmhouse ales made with Brettanomyces yeast.  I have included photographs of the Hill Farmstead and Pretty Things versions.

This next glass is called a Teku, and is a combination of the tulip and extended wine glass.  It features a 16 oz chamber, with a perfect shape for tasting beer.  Developed in Italy, more and more breweries that cater to beer geeks are having them made.  This is certainly on my wishlist, probably will end up with the Firestone Walker version.

Another glass recently developed is the so called IPA glass.  I know this was originally designed by Dogfish Head and Sierra Nevada for their hop forward beers.  I don't know why but something about this glass doesn't excite me a ton.  Looks like it would break quite easily.

Finally, tasting glasses, a great variety of which are pictured below made by Three Floyds of Indiana for their Dark Lord beers.  These are great for tastings where a 22 oz bomber of beer is shared by 4+ people.  Plus they look very cool.  Pro tip: Crate and Barrel has mini snifters if you have a last minute tasting coming up!

If I am missing your favorite style of glassware or you want to get in on the conversation, jump in the comments or shoot me an email!

#PROPERGLASWARE

Review: Jolly Pumpkin La Roja

Jolly Pumpkin is one of my favorite breweries.  I would drink it more often if not for the prohibitive cost.  Obviously their sours can not compare to Cantillon or Drie Fonteinen, but they are no joke either.  This beer is a Flanders Red, which is not supposed to be as cloyingly sour as a kriek, gueuze or lambic.  JP refers to this beer as an "Artisan Amber Ale Aged in Oak Barrels."  The bacteria and yeast are added to the barrel and then aged for awhile, at a certain point in time, multiple barrels are blended and then bottled individually.

This beer is a beautiful dark red color.  I poured it into my Leffe chalice, and a small, quickly dissipating head.  The smell is very complex and inviting, and has the typical vinegary (in a good way) smell that you expect in a "sour" beer.  Taste is equally complex.  Not extremely sour, but the funky Jolly Pumpkin essence is there.  The dark ruddy red colour so typical of Flanders Reds like Rodenbach is my favorite aspect of this beer.  It is 7.5% alcohol, and as such is not a beer you want to pound.  I sipped it over an hour while watching the Colbert Report and Daily Show.  Great beer for a Thursday night.

Summer is here

Summer is most definitely gearing into full swing. The Memorial Day weekend was abnormally hot, even Marina, my Brazilian wife, was sweating and complaining the whole weekend. I have been getting back into playing pick up basketball with some old friends and some new ones here in Quincy. We played some poker at my friend Joe from Walpole's house on Monday night, and I managed to drink roughly 20 craft beers!


I was in Western Mass with Marina checking out dorms at Mount Holyoke College, where she begins in the fall. She couldn't decide which one she would pick, but we made some progress. That campus is breathtaking in the summer, the old buildings are beautiful, its exactly what you think of in a private liberal arts college. We managed to grab some food and beer at Amherst Brewing Company right by UMass' flagship campus. Their beer is not spectacular, but the "Gone Postal" IPA that complemented my Bison Burger was hoppy and delicious. Didn't manage to take pictures, but I definitely recommend checking the place out, if you are in the neighborhood.

I grabbed a sixer of Founders Centennial IPA, could not find a date, but the hops were slightly faded, I was disappointed for $12. Additionally, I picked up a 12 pack of cans of Cisco's Whale's Tale Pale Ale, which is a solid English Pale Ale, that very lightly hopped, but thirst quenching and awesome in cans.

I grabbed a 750ml of Cantillon Rose de Gambrinus, mostly because I never see Cantillon in the bottle shops around here. Would drink exclusively sours if they weren't $17 a bottle! This was a 2010 vintage, and the raspberries were very clear, and accentuated the tart base lambic. I apologize for the lousy picture! Cantillon really is the master of sours, although my next sour will be Jolly Pumpkin's La Roja, to see what an American sour brewer can do.

Finally, I enjoyed my second 500ml bottle of Maine Brewing Co.'s Zoe. I grabbed 2 bottles for $10 at my local packy, which apparently is a pretty good deal. Zoe is a delicious amber, darker than something like Nugget Nectar, which is one of my all time favorites, but it was still hoppy and delicious, bottled 4/28 so the hops were still bright.

I will be volunteering at BeerAdvocate's American Craft Beer Fest on Saturday, and will try to get some photos!