By Mark Tichenor

The one-year-old Fairport Brewing Company, which produces its beers one half-barrel at a time, is renovating the old Pure Oil service station at the corner of Fairport Road and South Main Street in Fairport Village. The new facility will serve as a tasting and retail room, freeing up space at their existing Turk Hill Park facility to increase production capacity.

The expansion is a case study in how thirsty people are for local beer. In addition to making their own investments, and banging the turf hosting beer samplings around town, partners Tim Garman and Paul Guarracini turned to the crowdfunding website Kickstarter to raise capital for the new building and new brewing equipment. With six days to go at the time of this writing, the campaign exceeded its funding goal, leaving a smile on Garmin’s drywall dust-stained face.

So now it’s business as usual for the self-described “picobrewers,” as they continue to pump out six taps worth of beer at a time, along with the added responsibilities of opening the new shop and figuring out how to shoehorn a newly ordered  three-barrel brewing system into their current boutique-size space.

Nanobrewing (or picobrewing in this case) is the latest wave of growth in the brewing industry. Brewing on an extremely small scale obviates the massive capital investment costs of the typical craft brewery, but the low output of beer makes it hard to grow a commercial customer base and expand the business.

Fairport Brewing works on the latter problem by brewing several times a day. Guarracini, an award-winning veteran of the Rochester homebrewing scene, serves as the company’s brewmaster but is canny enough not to try to do it all himself. Unusually for a nanobrewery, FBC took on two part-time brewers, allowing for shift changes and extra hands to take care of unglamorous but critical tasks like cleaning and sanitation.

Garman and Guarracini have also learned to use the brewery’s low output as an advantage, using the small system’s flexibility to gush forth a dizzying array of creative beers and keeping them in a constant rotation in their six-tap retail area. FBC beers span a wide gamut, from powerful double IPAs to a soon-to-be-released Kölsch. Many of these are quite good, and almost all of them are solid, respectable craft beers.

The new retail space is a result of Garman, a lifelong Fairport local, staying true to his vision of slow, organic growth. Apart from the occasional guest tap at Fairport bars and restaurants, it will be the only place to buy FBC beer for the time being. The new brewery may change that however, more than tripling capacity. Even when regular retail keg distribution becomes a possibility, Garmin still holds to his “think Fairport” approach.

So far, that strategy paid off. Not only have Garman and Guarracini built the foundations of a dream for themselves, but they’ve earned the respect and trust of Fairporters who are proud to have their own local brewery, and they created a few jobs along the way. It looks like someone else is about to become New York State’s smallest brewery, because Fairport Brewing Company just got a little bigger.

Mark owns a laptop and likes beer. For more on beer, check out the beercraft blog, updated regularly, at beercraft.wordpress.com. Find him on Twitter @beercraft. Send your questions, suggestions, or comments to beercraft@rochester.rr.com.

by Mark Tichenor

Now that the warmer weather is being forcibly dragged out into the open, maybe it’s time we sit down on a sunny patio and consider what the perfect summer beer might be. The answer, of course, is pilsner, a historic and much-revered style in Europe that gets unfairly maligned in craft beer circles on this side of the pond.

This is primarily because pilsner is a crisp, clean yellow lager. It was the primary type of beer adapted by immigrant German brewers in the 19th century, and it became the model upon which mainstream American beers were more than loosely based. As a result, the term ‘Pilsner’ became a descriptor for the blandest of bland beer.

Pilsner also found little love among craft brewers. It’s a technically difficult beer to brew, and the clean flavor magnifies flaws or shortcuts in the process. As a lager, it  also needs to spend more time in the tanks than rapidly fermenting ales, and thus costs more money to produce. While you can find absolutely stunning North American craft pilsners, they are still few and far between.

It remains difficult to pinpoint Pilsner’s characteristics, since even the Germans tend to infuriatingly refer to every kind of beer as ‘Pils.’ Broadly, the style divides into two types: Czech and German. Czech pils is the original and most famous; indeed, the style was originally developed in the Czech town of Pilsen, hence the name. As the story goes, the poor burghers of Pilzen were sick and tired of bad beer, so to show their displeasure they theatrically dumped it all out (Call it the ‘‘Pilsen Beer Party”), invested in a new brewery, and hired a Bavarian brewer used to working with the newfangled lager yeast to come over and create the town brew. Bang! Pilsner.

Ranging from medium to light amber in color, with an attractive soapy head, it has a medium body and a slightly sweet biscuity grain character, followed by the Pilsner trademark, a quick, butter Saaz hop kick in the finish that fades away leaving just the ghost of an aftertaste.

The prime example of Czech pilsner is Pilsner Urquell, a descendent of the original beer brewed in Bohemia back in 1842. Czechvar is also very well known, although more for its famously unsuccessful intellectual property battle with Anheuser-Busch, which didn’t think that a beer originally named ‘Budweiser ’ or ‘Budvar’ since 1785 had any right to use that name.

The German stuff is a little different. It retains the big, foamy head, with a noticeably lighter pale straw color and a cleaner flavor. The hop kick is also much more powerful than in the Czech stuff. A good rule of thumb is, the further north in Germany you travel, the more bitter the hop finish. Until American craft brewing, the pilsner made by East Frisian brewer Jever (pronounced yay-ver, should you want to suavely order one at the pub) ranked as one of the hoppiest beers in the world.

Jever remains the most prominently exported North German pils, although you can find notable examples, such as Dinkel Acker CD Pils from Stuttgart and Radeberger from Frankfurt, as well as a slew of borderline quasi pilsners (Beck’s, Veltins, St. Pauli Girl) that blur the line between purist style and mass-market blandness in pursuit of the almighty Euro.

On these shores, the Victory Brewing Company of Downingtown, Pennsylvania reigns as the champion of pilsner, producing both a German style (Prima Pils) and a Czech (Braumeister Pils). Needless to say, these are both excellent and a worthy addition to any summertime cookout. Sly Fox Brewing of Phoenixville, PA also produces the standout Pikeland Pils, which has the added bonus of coming in handy cans.

Pilsners are at their best when the mercury starts rising and the sweat starts flowing; no other style quenches and refreshes quite as thoroughly, or goes as well with a home-grilled meal enjoyed out on the patio. They’re also fantastic ‘lawnmower beers’ for consumption as you do summer yardwork,  although it is recommended that you not begin their consumption until you are done using the heavy bladed equipment.

For more on beer, check out the beercraft blog, updated regularly, at beercraft.wordpress.com. Find Mark on Twitter @beercraft. Send your questions, suggestions, or comments to beercraft@rochester.rr.com.

by Mark Tichenor

I’m writing this column from deep within the man box–you know, that narrowly defined range of emotions and interests that shows the outside world that one is truly deserving of being considered masculine. We’re talking things like grilling steak, grunting, and big bitter double IPA.

Well it’s a load of crap. Especially when it comes to beer. Sometimes even us manly he-men can appreciate the art, complexity, and downright delishitude an excellent Belgian lambic affords. These wild-fermented fruit-laced ales are some of the most unique on the planet, and, berries and all, among the most challenging beers to ever cross your uvula.

Lambic beers break all the rules. Traditionally they ferment in big open vats, allowing the natural yeasts and bacteria of the Belgian microclimate to settle in and spontaneously ferment. The resulting beer is so throat-punchingly tart that it needs to be blended with older, mellower beer to make ‘gueuze’, before it’s even potable, and commonly gets flavored with cherry (kriek) or strawberry (framboise) before going to market.

Now you can be forgiven if the word ‘Framboise’ conjures up images of Audrey Hepburn goggles and tiny dog snouts poking out of Prada bags, because the framboise you’re most likely to find–brewed by Belgium’s Lindeman’s Brewery–is sweet and fizzy, more soda-pop than beer, with a frilly pink head and comically low ABV. This is a beer designed by marketers to capture the purses of young American urban women and nothing more. REAL Lambic bears about as much relationship to Lindemans Framboise as The Olive Garden’s breadsticks do to the cuisine of Tuscany.

The twisty streets around the Gare du Midi in Brussels, Belgium are not tourist avenues. They’re tough and gritty, an immigrant neighborhood with a decidedly north-African flair. Petty crime is rampant; crystals of auto glass lie in curbside piles and the narrow alleys echo with those funny European police sirens. It’s the last place you’d expect to find a farmhouse-style brewery, but Brasserie Cantillon never bothers to do what’s expected.

Cantillon is a throwback, and the home of serious lambic. They go heavy on the unflavored Gueze. They make it the real way and they make it sour. In each sip, you taste the must and musk of the farmhouse, and each swallow is tart enough to nearly close your throat. this is unquestionably a macho-ass beer, and the brewery is a mecca among beer tourists.

Lindemans and Cantillon are the polar extremes of lambic, with many small brewers and blenders somewhere in between. One of the finest is only recently available in the Rochester area: the Kriek (cherry)  from Brouwerij Boon in the original lambic town of Lembeek, Belgium.

Boon Kriek is a masterpiece of complexity and balance. Nowhere near as sour as Cantillon‘s beers, with a soft, subtle sweetness, the one sensation a sip of boon provides is creamy. The lactic acidity meshes with the cherries to provide a pillowy, almost marshmallow essence. Heavier in body than most Kriek, Boon’s example is robust enough to pair with game meats (stay away from salty cured stuff), yet strikingly elegant as a nightcap or special occasion toast.

The variety of lambic textures and flavors is all the more striking considering the tininess of the region where it is made. To this day, with the exception of Lindeman’s, the beers remain the sort of farmhouse products at which people in skinny jeans would toss the words ‘artisinal’ and ‘curated.’ To thoroughly experience lambics, you pretty much still have to go to Belgium.

Fortunately, our beer stores and more enlightened pubs appreciate the place these fine beers have on the table, and, with a little determination, you can find a decent variety right here. With a beer style this special, the hunt is part of the fun, and lambic will provide an adequately sweet, or sour, reward. Oh, and never let anyone tell you your fruit beer isn’t manly.

Mark owns a laptop and likes beer. For more on beer, check out the beercraft blog, updated regularly, at beercraft.wordpress.com. Find him on Twitter @beercraft. Send your questions, suggestions, or comments to beercraft@rochester.rr.com.

by Mark Tichenor

There’s something in the American psyche that makes so many of us gravitate to the grandiose. Some view it as a great national trait, others a curse. No matter where we are, no matter what our tastes, there’s a compulsion for more: more money, a bigger house, hotter chicken wings. Of course, that also applies to how we we approach craft beer, and the alcohol content therein.An appreciative palate is not instantaneously formed, rather it starts rough-hewn and gets chipped away at until finer flavors blossom. Hence the common gravitation of new craft beer lovers to comically bitter and insanely strong beers. That’s a lucky thing, because beer is fundamentally a rough-hewn beverage, and these insane and comical beers are some of the best in the world.That’s why it’s so easy to fall in love with craft beer, you don’t need years of poring over vineyard geography and grape grafting notes to have a decent conversation about the stuff. One thing you don’t want on any palate however, even in beers of considerable might, is the taste of alcohol. Ironically, the methods used to avoid alcohol flavors play a large role in why big beers taste the way they do.

To get more alcohol into a beer, you need more fermentable sugar. To get more fermentable sugar, you need more malt. That’s where those robust, bready and sweet tastes come from. Of course those flavors need balance and that is why God invented hops.

To balance a big, high-gravity beer you need a lot of hops, strong ones, with high alpha acid content. This is one of the areas where big beers diverge; those made with roasted malt and minimal aroma and bittering hops go on to become imperial stouts, and others comprised of paler malt and heavily hopped, there’s your India Pale Ale.

The first thing beer neophytes fall in love with is hop flavor. That enticing blend of citrus, earthiness and bitter draws people in and provides a convenient scale for how hardcore a beer lover one has become. A broader range of taste is developed with time, but even longtime craft beer lovers proudly wear the label “hophead.”

It’s ironic that, as beers get more powerful, so much more attention must be paid to that kind of misdirection of the palate, a sleight-of-mouth trick that distracts you from alcohol flavor by hammering your tongue with big hop and malt taste and tons of aroma. Not all beers successfully pull it off. It’s not  at all uncommon to feel an alcoholic burn in some of the bigger styles.

It’s also safe to assume that beers will continue to push the extreme envelope, because that’s the American brewing way. Brooklyn Brewing Company brewmaster Garrett Oliver is famously quoted as saying “The hoppiest beer? It’s a fairly idiotic pursuit, like a chef saying, ‘This is the saltiest dish.’ Anyone can toss hops in a pot, but can you make it beautiful?” The same goes for the strongest beer, and, to many craft breweries, the idea doesn’t seem so idiotic anymore.

Mark owns a laptop and likes beer. For more on beer, check out the beercraft blog, updated regularly, at beercraft.wordpress.com. Find him on Twitter @beercraft. Send your questions, suggestions, or comments to beercraft@rochester.rr.com.

by Mark Tichenor

With low-alcohol session beers and delicate, lacey sour ales as its most recent fads, you could be forgiven for thinking the craft beer scene was mellowing out, losing it’s cojones, taking its cues from the first half hour of Rocky III. You’d be wrong though. Still and always, the vital core of the craft beer movement, the beating, booze-sodden heart of what makes American beer exceptional, bombastic and impossible to ignore, is double IPA. And these overdone beer behemoths still register as what many connoisseurs consider the best beers in the world.

The name of the style is a bit misleading; the creation of a memorable high-strength hop bomb involves more than grabbing the IPA recipe and adding twice as much of everything. When the hop addition increases, the fermentable sugar level inches into the red and the ABV climbs over 7%, things can go horribly wrong. The key to a great double IPA is balance.

Hops used in DIPAs are high alpha acid varieties like Cascade, Amarillo and Citra. These hops put out enormous quantities of resin and citrus flavor that spans the gamut of flavor notes, anything from mango or pineapple to, um, substances only legal in Washington and Colorado.

But all that hop flavor dissolves into so much bitter fizzwater without an enormous malt backbone to serve as a counterbalance. For one thing, it’s from the malt that a beer derives the sugar which will ferment into alcohol, and for a beer the strength of a double IPA, you need a LOT of that sugar. Just as important, the sweet, hearty, rustic nature of that malt brings out and lifts all those amazing hop flavors and aromas.

This kind of beer embodies everything American. It’s very existence as a style is owed to people dissatisfied with existing boundaries; people who couldn’t stop themselves from asking “what if?” The result of that type of curiosity turned out to be more than a strong, characterful style of beer, it was the ethos that revived and grew the comatose US brewing industry.

Although the Pacific coast is the epicenter of Double IPA, home to examples like the Russian River Brewing Company’s famous “Pliny the Younger,” a beer people will inexplicably wait in line for eight hours to purchase. The style, however, has taken root all over the country, and many New York State breweries produce excellent DIPAs of their own. Brooklyn Brewing, Southern Tier Brewing and Captain Lawrence Brewing Company fabricate excellent examples. Also, Three Heads Brewing just released their “Too Kind,” a turbocharged, amped-up version of their popular “The Kind” IPA.

My pick for folks in the Rochester area: “OT20.” Originally brewed by CB’s Brewing of Honeoye Falls for the 20th anniversary of local English pub The Old Toad, “OT20” proved so popular that it’s still being brewed four years later. It’s a sweet, grapefruity, chunky assassin of a beer. It will destroy you if you let it (this is the voice of experience talking).

“OT20” is also available for sale in only one place on this Earth: The taproom of The Old Toad. That makes it at least as, if not more, exclusive than the aforementioned “Pliny The Younger.” That’s fine, because double IPA is an affordable luxury product and, like all the good things in life, you shouldn’t have to queue up for eight hours to enjoy one of the most flavorful styles of beer in existence.

In Other Beers

Three Heads “Rochestefarian Wee Heavy” is now out and flowing from a tapline near you. Brewed in the Scottish ale tradition (or at least as close to any tradition as Three Heads will allow themselves to get), Rochestefarian goes down sweet and strong, with a substantial hop kick in the finish. It’s a big, warming beer that should set your palate up nicely for the spring seasonals to come. Oh and the tap handle art is awesome.

Mark owns a laptop and likes beer. For more on beer, check out the beercraft blog, updated regularly, at beercraft.wordpress.com. Find him on Twitter @beercraft. Send your questions, suggestions, or comments to beercraft@rochester.rr.com.

by Mark Tichenor

Here in Rochester, we haven’t exactly been hurting for great beer. We’ve always had the humongous Genesee Brewery perched on the edge of our river gorge, and since the Rohrbach Brewing Company opened its doors in the 1980s, we enjoyed a steady stream of superior beer. Still, in terms of great American brewing scenes, ours hasn’t even been on the map.

That’s mostly because, with the exception of Genesee, most of our local breweries are content with their local markets, focusing on organic growth instead of pushing Rochester beer out to other reasons.

As Rohrbach. Custom Brewcrafters and Canandaigua’s Naked Dove show, the regional/national approach is just one way to thrive in a market as thirsty as this. Area craft beer consumption continues to climb, and drinkers are demanding enough of variety to ensure that these breweries have plenty of market to develop. In that sense, Three Heads serves a complimentary function, drawing beer lovers’ attention to Rochester and serving as a gateway to the many fine breweries that bless our corner of the country.

For many breweries, that would mean distributing to the next large city over, and a slow, concentric expansion. However, that does not satisfy Geoff Dale, Three Heads’ ever-loquacious frontman.

“There’s a point where you realize certain cities are considered ‘beer capitals,’ “ he says. “You have to have enough confidence in your product to say ‘if you’re gonna do this, do it!’” Of course, it didn’t hurt that Three Heads was invited, out of the blue by Beer Advocate’s Alstrom brothers to participate in their annual American Craft Beer Fest in Boston. That was a sign that the heads’ beer was opening up eyes, ears and mouths far away from Rochester, in extremely competitive markets.

Today, Three Heads distributes to Virginia, Boston, Chicago, and even Philadelphia, considered by many to be the craft beer capital of the East Coast. Dale says that, even in such a beer-centric environment, his beer is more than holding its own. He credits strong relationships with distribution companies for much of that success.

“We’re at a point where there’s a partnership, where we realize that we and our distributors are stronger than ever,” he says. “We have an endgame- to have our own brewery. We can’t do that without properly branding ourselves and expanding our distribution network.”

As Mark Schultz, Regional Sales Manager for T.J. Sheehan, the distributor for Three Heads beers puts it, that partnership is vital for a local brewery to expand regionally and beyond. “The reality is a brewery out of Rochester can’t physically go beyond the Rochester market without the three-tier distribution system.”

Three Heads is far from the first contract brewer to expand beyond their own geographic borders, but success beyond the home region depends on more than just signing a distribution contract. Distributors want brands that make money. It’s all about identifying good business partners,” Schultz says. “These guys market themselves extremely well, they pound the pavement. The brand translates very well. As a distributor, it’s what will fit in our portfolio that complements what we already have. We don’t ‘collect’ brands.”

Even while introducing other parts of the country to Rochester beers, Dale works hard to keep his beer flowing at home, and he believes there is plenty of bounty for all local breweries, yet extra-regional distribution is something he feels is critical for Rochester. “I think people are now starting to see Rochester potentially being a destination,” Dale says. “Maybe this is just a dream, but I see this vibe in Portland, where everything, beer and music and culture, ties together. I see Rochester being one of these cities. There’s so much greatness, and we’re happy to be part of it.”

Mark owns a laptop and likes beer. For more on beer, check out the beercraft blog, updated regularly, at beercraft.wordpress.com. Find him on Twitter @beercraft. Send your questions, suggestions, or comments to beercraft@rochester.rr.com.

Victory At Sea

New Beers Here From East and West

By Mark Tichenor

It’s gratifying to see how many great breweries take our tiny slice of Western New York seriously enough to distribute and market their products in Rochester. It says a lot about us as beer lovers, as people who appreciate craftsmanship and as developers of a vibrant culinary culture. We may not be one of the biggest markets but, darn it, we matter.
Last week, two new entrants coupled up to area taplines: Captain Lawrence Brewing from the Hudson Valley and Ballast Point Brewing from San Diego. Both breweries are firmly established and highly regarded, and each brings something special to the region.

Nestled just outside the business district of Elmsford, New York, Captain Lawrence has grown right along with the craft beer revolution. The brewery recently opened a new production facility, which enables them to expand their reach. Last week, Captain Lawrence celebrated their arrival in Rochester with a special happy hour at The Tap and Table, the first area establishment to carry their beer. Of the four on draft at the time of the tasting, two stood out as great beers.

Captain’s Kölsch is a refreshing take on a style that often seems to trip brewers up. Kölsch is an Ale brought up to think it’s a lager, simultaneously clean yet snappy. It takes longer to ferment and there’s some skill involved in avoiding extra flavors thrown by the yeast. This one hits the nail pretty much right on the head. It’s slightly sweet, a little lemony, and manages to exhibit character despite its crisp teutonic palate. It really wouldn’t be out of place in the little bars of Cologne.

The first thing you notice when you lift a glass of Captain Lawrence Liquid Gold is an aroma that reaches up and punches you in the nostrils. Belgian-style golden ales are sought after precisely for this sort of presence and character, which also comes through in the beer’s funky sweet and spicy flavor. The Liquid Gold never verges on syrupy though, with a pleasant liquid quench quality that tempts me to recommend it as a summer lawnmower beer, except for the fact that it’s north of 6% alcohol and drinking these while cutting the grass would result in some interesting yard patterns.

Ballast Point Brewing has some tough competition right out of the gate. They share their home market of San Diego with Green Flash Brewing and the Almighty Stone Brewing Co. (which paradoxically won Beer Advocate’s ‘Best Brewery of All Time’ title in two different years). Beginning last Wednesday, that competition continued in Rochester for the first time at The Old Toad.

It’s increasingly hard to stand out as an IPA. Great examples and okay examples exist within percentage points of each other, and, barring flaws, it’s hard to even put one’s finger on what might make one more delicious. Ballast Point’s Sculpin IPA, however, does distinguish itself. The aroma promises honey, grass and freshly turned earth, and the beer delivers these flavors, and a sneaky, alluring funk, with impressive subtlety. The other prominent aromatic note makes one wonder if Sculpin IPA was just legalized in Colorado and Washington.

Ballast Point’s standout beer is absolutely the Victory at Sea Coffee Vanilla Porter, and there is nothing really subtle about it. It’s big and chewy, smells like breakfast, and unapologetically melds three flavors proven to work well together: coffee, vanilla and chocolate.

That’s not to say Victory at Sea isn’t sophisticated. You taste each flavor in turn, and the chocolate notes are more cocoa than milk chocolate, forgoing candy sweetness for a more complex elegance. It’s the difference between birthday cake and Viennese pastry, and a tantalizing dessert unto itself.

Both Captain Lawrence and Ballast Point are here for the long haul, with local distribution, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to find them in beer stores and on tap around the county within a couple of weeks. The arrival of these two breweries into a relatively crowded market demonstrates that there’s always room for a couple more places at the beer table, and reinforces how lucky we are to be beer lovers in this day and age.

   Mark owns a laptop and likes beer. For more on beer, check out the beercraft blog, updated regularly, at beercraft.wordpress.com. Find him on Twitter @beercraft. Send your questions, suggestions, or comments to beercraft@rochester.rr.com.

By Mark Tichenor

Rochester’s latest craft brewery is… Genesee? It feels weird just to type those words but it’s true. Over on Cataract Street, in the recently opened Genesee Brew House, ex-Wagner Valley brewer Dean Jones is making a line of Genesee craft beers for on-premise sales and consumption, and, for the most part, they’re pretty darn good.

If you’re unfamiliar with the Brew House, it’s the new visitors’ center, heritage museum and pub that opened up in a renovated Cataract Street facility early this fall. The place is really slick; Genesee’s parent company spared no expense in installing a beautiful facility with the best view of High Falls you could imagine. Oh, and in the back they placed a killer 20-barrel brewery that lets Genesee go toe-to-toe with any craft brewery, on their own turf at least.

Brewing true small-batch craft beers is something many in the company wanted to do, but it was never feasable in their principal brewhouse, which is set up to produce hundreds of thousands of gallons at a time. The small pilot brewery allows Genesee brewers to tinker with recipes and ideas that can later scale up to national-level production, in addition to the new and ever-rotating craft beer line.

This is a brand new direction for a company that was built on not changing very much, so it’s unsurprising that the Genesee craft line interprets classic beer styles, like porter and English IPA, instead of striking out into the land of exotic ingredients and crazy style mashups. This may not sit well with the hallowed pinnacles of beergeekery, but it’s in keeping with traditional artisan brewing and creates some lovely daily drinkers.

Genesee Scotch Ale is the most mouth-watering. Dark, heavy and sweet, it nails the style guidelines and still manages to refresh. The IPA impresses as well, leading with a grassy nose and a hint of citrus from the hops. With it’s overall hop profile being quite subdued in comparison with most American IPAs, this would be a great introduction for people just starting to explore beer. The porter is somewhat disappointing, very light for the style and more reminiscent of a brown ale. A winter warmer also just went on tap, and a North German Pils is happily lagering away for the near future.

Genesee deserves kudos for not wrapping these beers in a cutesy brand identity or giving them silly names for the sake of marketing. Consumer preferences have reverted to artisan level, and Genesee lets the beer stand naked, to be appreciated as a product that represents the venerable brewery.

Currently, the only place to get the Genesee craft line is at The Brew House itself, but that’s not a bad thing. Sitting in a cozy pub, with the waterfall cascading away in the background (and a damn good order of wings on the table) helps to give the drinker a sense of place…a connection to Rochester and its iconic brewery. With that combination of place and beverage, the Genesee Brewery is bound to gain respect here at home.

Mark owns a laptop and likes beer. For more on beer, check out the beercraft blog, updated regularly, at beercraft.wordpress.com. Find him on Twitter @beercraft. Send your questions, suggestions, or comments to beercraft@rochester.rr.com.

Big Head Stout

There’s Nothing Wrong With Having A Big Head

By Mark Tichenor

The beer scene is all about pushing the envelope. Each new beer is bigger, stronger, hoppier or more sour. But sometimes the way to grow is to take a step back toward the fundamentals. That’s what Three Heads Brewing did with their new seasonal release, Big Head Stout.

With the exception of the Irish dry style, you don’t see a lot of plain old stouts. Right now it’s all about insanely strong imperial stouts made with unicorn horns and virgin’s tears, then aged in 100 year old whiskey barrels. In that sense, Big Head is a retrenchment, free of gimmicks or pretense. It’s comfort beer that takes the Heads back to their days slaving over the basement brewkettle.

“When we did homebrewing competitions, the beer that consistently got the most medals was our stout,” says Geoff Dale, co-partner and head of sales for the company. “This is a stout you can have three pints of, but still not feel like it’s a watered-down weenie beer.”

Named after Three Heads employee Brian Johnson’s magnificent cranium, Big Head Stout packs a lot of character into that pint glass. As you’d expect, it’s pitch dark, with tons of vanilla and hazelnut in both nose and flavor, but without the ’burned’ quality that’s so characteristic of stouts due to the heavily roasted malt. This makes the 7% abv Big Head instinctively, dangerously drinkable. And yes, my freshly poured example had a big, voluminous head.

The beer’s texture serves as the delivery vehicle for all that flavor, it’s silky, almost chewy, but doesn’t get so heavy as to be cloying. It’ll fill you up, but you’ll wind up happy to be full. It’s like the beer version of home cooking, and seconds are hard to resist.

Big Head Stout is a limited-release seasonal beer. The first 60 barrel batch is completely spoken for by pubs, restaurants and distributors, and there will be a second 20 barrel batch to follow. Dale says the Heads are playing it by ear, gauging consumer demand before planning a third time on the brew schedule. It’s currently on draft in Rochester at The Tap and Mallet, but you’ll soon be able to find it across the city and throughout Three Heads’ 10-state distribution area in places where they give a crap about good beer.

Really, Big Head Stout demonstrates a maturation for Three Heads, whose partners enjoy blurring style boundaries and occasionally playing with wacky ingredients. It takes a certain wisdom to realize that beer is an ancient beverage that stood the test of time for a reason, and sometimes the finest, most luxurious things are borne of simplicity. It’s a pity this is a seasonal release. Here’s to a very long season.

In other beers

The new Genesee Tap House’s 20 barrel brewery finally swung into action. Three new small-batch beers are now available for tasting and on draft in their upstairs pub: A Scotch ale, blonde ale and pale ale. The beers are also available to take home in growlers.

Mark owns a laptop and likes beer. For more on beer, check out the beercraft blog, updated regularly, at beercraft.wordpress.com. Find him on Twitter @beercraft. Send your questions, suggestions, or comments to beercraft@rochester.rr.com.

By Mark Tichenor

Restaurant owners tend to be a conservative bunch, and who can blame them? In such a tough business it’s generally best to adopt an “if it aint broke, don’t fix it” mentality. For the longest time, however, that mindset only served to annoy the bejeezus out of craft beer lovers.

Only a few years ago you could expect to walk into a nice restaurant, find a wine list the size and complexity of the U.S. Tax Code, yet be treated to two or three domestic lagers and maybe an imported…lager. There was a pervasive mentality that, in the face of wine, beer was somehow too gauche to grace upscale tables.

These days the inverse is true. It’s rare to find a restaurant that doesn’t display a range and knowledge of fine beers from America and countries around the world. Beer menus coexist with wine lists, and great brews bring a touch of refinement to the table without vinicultural pretense. What caused this change in condition? Restauranteurs figured out beer could make them money.

According to a study by Consumer Edge Insight, 33 percent of alcohol drinkers who visit restaurants regularly report that they are more likely to order beer when offered a large selection of brands.  A better beer selection also made 26 percent of respondents order more servings of beer than they otherwise would have, because they want to try different kinds. More beer sales equals more revenue.

It seems kind of obvious doesn’t it? Just like kids want to try every flavor in the ice cream parlor, well-adjusted adults want a sip of every beer. Not only will a good, rotating beer list drive increased purchasing on a single restaurant visit, it’s also a heck of an incentive to keep folks coming back.

Close to 2,000 breweries nationwide, and now firmly-established third-party distribution networks help to keep those beer lists both great and rotating. For restaurant managers, the decision to stock beer from a brewery around the block, or beer from the other side of the world, has never been easier.

It begs the question, is the growth in beer revenue hurting wine sales? Jaime Barclay, General Manager of The Tap and Table in Rochester, doesn’t think so. “What’s most important is having a well-rounded beverage selection, in beer and wine and craft spirits,” she says. “We’re known as a beer place, but finding a great beer may make a customer want to try a great wine on the next visit. That’s why we don’t separate the sections out on our menu.”

Donna Schlosser-Long, Sales Consultant with wine importers Fredrick Wildman & Sons, agrees. In her view, wine and beer have always had a symbiotic relationship. “I don’t think there are wine customers not drinking beer, or beer customers, not drinking wine,” she says. Schlosser-Long also points out that wine sales in restaurants continue to rise, bolstering the evidence that people are enjoying craft beer alongside rather than instead of wine.

So the next time you find yourself at one of those places without dollar-signs on the menu, consider ordering a great beer to compliment a great meal. You just might be surprised at how the right brew brings out food’s flavors, and you’ll definitely display a sophistication for the modern age.

For more on beer, check out the beercraft blog, updated regularly, at beercraft.wordpress.com. Find him on Twitter @beercraft. Send your questions, suggestions, or comments to beercraft@rochester.rr.com.