Beer

Sam Fitz is a Certified Cicerone® and the Beer Director at Meridian Pint and soon to open Smoke & Barrel. Read Sam’s take on Ranger IPA here.

Craft beer is much more than quality suds, it’s also good people with good stories. There’s no better evidence of this than the growing number of collaborative brews that hit the market every month. A decade ago, craft brewers were small islands operating in the shadows of giant conglomerated breweries. It was a survivalist era and the notion of collaboration was nonexistent. Now, with craft beer eating away every day at the market share of the American macro-lager, there is a swagger to small brewing and a growing sense of community – an us against them mentality. Small breweries that compete for sales are teaming up to produce beers that aren’t profit driven; these collaborations help to build the community that has blossomed into a sanctuary for real, tasty beer.

In 2009, Sierra Nevada, one of the forefathers of the American craft beer movement, teamed up with Dogfish Head, a more recent entrant but craft powerhouse nonetheless, for their first ever collaboration. Two beers, “Limb & Life,” and “Life & Limb,” were produced. Made from the same ingredients, the first was a “small” beer at 4.2% while the second, a “big” beer, came in at 10.2%. Immensely popular and quickly sold-out nationwide, these two brews are named in tribute to the spirit of craft brewing; “our two breweries were among many fine breweries that breathed LIFE into the colorful, diverse, and beautiful LIMBS of the American craft-brewing family tree” (Sam Calagione, President and Founder, Dogfish Head Craft Brewery). A reward for the brewers, and more importantly their followers that helped make the craft revolution possible, collaborations are about celebrating the journey of good beer.

After much anticipation, Life & Limb returns on its own. This time they brewed a substantially bigger batch and will reward a great many more craft beer drinkers for their years of support to the good beer movement. Available in 750mL bottles and some draft, Life & Limb has already started popping up here in DC.

Life & Limb explodes from the bottle with a loud pop. Two fingers of creamy, tan head pile up on the beer in the form of tiny bubbles that persevere for quite some time. Birch syrup from Alaska is used to condition this beer in the bottle and feed the living yeast (a blend of Sierra and Dogfish’s house yeast), giving the beer “Life.”

The color of Life & Limb is almost black but with enough light, a rich, chestnut brown is revealed. The malt is entirely grown by Sierra and a portion of it is heavily roasted into Chocolate malt which gives the beer its magnificent color. Maple syrup from the Calagione family farm is added to the brew and contributes, along with the Birch syrup used for carbonating, to the “Limb,” in the name.

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Ed. Note: After we spoke about Fat Tire last week a reader wrote in suggesting a regular feature on beers. As a lover of beer I thought it was a great idea. As a drinker of Budweiser I knew I needed an expert. Welcome Sam Fitz from Meridian Pint who will (along with other guest posters) tackle a beer every week. If you have a specific beer you’d like reviewed let us know in the comments or send me an email at princeofpetworth(at)gmail.

New Belgium 22-ounce bottles are being sent to bars, restaurants and stores across Washington today, but they’re not just distributing Fat Tire. Yes, it is exciting that one of the country’s most sought-after beers will finally be regularly available here in DC, but New Belgium makes a range of other beers well worth drinking. Three of their staples–Ranger IPA, Trippel, and Hoptober Golden Ale (seasonal)–also hit shelves today.

Lips of Faith, New Belgium’s highly prized experimental line of beers, is coming too in the form of two new brews, Clutch and Kick. The first is a dark sour ale and the second a cranberry pumpkin beer that also resides on the sour side.

As exciting an addition as both of these beers are to the already exploding DC beer culture, Ranger IPA, which should be available year-round, is worth a closer look. At 6.5%, Ranger IPA isn’t too boozy but, at a very high 70 International Bitterness Units, it’s a bit of a beast that will leave your palate stripped of the capacity to taste anything else–other than another sip of Ranger, of course. This beer is not for the light-hearted, but it does offer a big bouquet of tastes and aromas that reward those who are brave. Ranger pours a very clear, deep golden color with a moderate amount of off-white head that dissipates fairly quickly. The aromatics of this beer are vibrant and are perhaps its greatest feature. Pleasant but almost abrasive resinous piney smells from Simcoe hops fade into a softer tropical fruit sensation. Cascade (the hop that made Sierra Nevada famous) and Chinook hops impart this grapefruit/pineapple presence that is enhanced by additional dry-hopping with Cascade.

The first sip is surprising. Initially, the beer is light on the palate, Pale and Dark Caramel malts make themselves known but don’t overwhelm, but then the dry, grapefruit pith-like bitterness explodes and lingers long after swallowing. This definitely is a West Coast-style IPA, and it’s certainly not for everyone but, like the rest of the New Belgium line, it’s undeniably worth a try.

Sam Fitz is a Certified Cicerone® and the Beer Director at Meridian Pint and soon to open Smoke & Barrel.

Danny Harris is a DC-based photographer, DJ and collector of stories. In September, he launched People’s District, a blog that tells a people’s history of DC by sharing the stories and images of its residents. Every day, People’s District presents a different Washingtonian sharing his or her insights on everything from Go Go music to homelessness to fashion to politics. You can read his previous columns here.

Ed. Note:  Danny sends me these great stories directly, they are not hand selected by me.

“I grew up outside of Burlington, Vermont. When I was 19, I tried to convince my Dad to let me use his home beer brewing kit, but he said I was too young. Then, when I was 20, I bugged him again and he finally took it out and we brewed a brown ale together. In college, I grew to like beer more and brewed a new batch every couple of months for me and my friends. But, I really fell in love with beer when I moved to DC.

“I bought equipment down here and started making regular batches. DC is a political place and I like to make theme beers. You know, beer names are full of puns, that is why people like beer so much. I wanted to throw an election party and brew a cleverly named, themed beer. Four or five months before the election, which is probably more time than I spent preparing anything, including my senior thesis at college, I created the Audacity of Hops. I used victory malt and progress hops and coffee from Hawaii, Kenya, and Indonesia, which are Obama’s three homelands. It was 8% alcohol and made of half-light and half-dark malt. It was a very thought-out process. The election came and the party went over really well. People loved it and The City Paper even wrote about it. You know, I didn’t have a contingency plan had McCain won. I could have made a McCain beer I guess, but it would have been bitter, old, and dusty!

“For inauguration, I had another party and made 200 numbered Audacity of Hops beers. That was the most beers I had ever made in my life. I even kept a bottle of Audacity of Hops for the President. It is numbered 50 for the great State of Hawaii. I have tried to get it to him on a number of occasions, but I don’t know if it’s going to happen. But, if the President every wants it, even when he is no longer the President and just some dude living down the street and he wants to have a beer, it will always be waiting for him.

“Seeing and being involved with the beer culture in this city got me thinking about starting a brewery. One of my biggest questions is why there is not a real functioning DC microbrewery. Other major cities have multiple local breweries. Seeing the success of the Audacity of Hops and the success of my regular beer-tasting nights with friends, it is clear that people love beer here. But, the most local brew you can get here is from Delaware and Virginia.

“It has been 25 years since there was a microbrewery in the area. Before the Kennedy Center was built, that land once belonged to the Heurich brewery, built by a German immigrant in the 19th century. But, sometime in the 50’s or 60’s, he started contract brewing up in New York. That was really the last bottling brewery in DC. I would love to buy a DC beer that is brewed with DC water and takes pride in being from DC.”