Traditionally, the way people have tried to get people into craft beer has been a gradual escalation of intensity. Everything starts with American lager – if you like Budweiser, try a pale ale. If you like pale ales, try an IPA or a brown ale. If you like those, try stouts and porters. Go on from there to the extreme world of barleywines and “imperial” beers.

Basically, it’s a gradual shift from what people think of as typical or American beer to the stuff us beer geeks salivate over. The path certainly gets some people drinking better beer, but it doesn’t really take taste into account. Instead, it’s a focus on a repeated refrain of “oh, this is like what you’ve had before, but a little bit different.”

This year, a couple of great beer writers have turned me on to a much better way to turn beer non-drinkers into beer lovers. In The Naked Pint and Great American Craft Beer, the authors suggest that the best way to match people with beer is finding out the flavors they like. Not flavors like hoppy or malty – terms even beer geeks can’t seem to agree on – but lemon, caramel, espresso, plum, scotch or apple pie. It’s a fun way to discover beers, and a testament to the huge variety of flavors that exists across the dozens of beer styles (or even within a particular style). It also makes discussing beer with people new to the stuff much easier, as people can point to flavors in foods and drinks they like instead of in particular beers.

So, for everyone from beer neophyte to beer devotee, here’s a list of some familiar flavors you can find in some of my favorite beers.

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If you like a hot cup of coffee in the morning, try the Smuttynose Robust Porter.
Stouts and porters have pretty significant notes of coffee, chocolate brown sugar and molasses – not a fault of those things being added, but a product of the dark roasted malt used to brew the beer. Smutty’s Robust Porter is heavy on the coffee flavor, and tastes a bit like a cup of cold French Press coffee.

If you like sugar cookies, try Southern Tier Pumking.
Ever had one of those sugar cookies they sell right around Halloween? The kind with some pumpkin pie spices? This is like that.

If you like banana cream pie, try a hefeweizen like Three Floyds’ Drunk Monk.
The esters from the funky yeast used in most hefeweizens make for intense aromas and flavors of banana, clove and bubble gum. The banana notes are usually stronger in the nose of a hefe than the taste, but the Drunk Monk has a serious banana bread kick.

If you like a grapefruit in the morning, try Weyerbacher Double Simcoe IPA.
A lot of the hops in the Pacific Northwest – cascade, simcoe and centennial, for example – create strong smells and flavors of citrus in a beer. A particularly grapefruity hop is simcoe, and this double IPA from Weyerbacher cranks the hops and citrus taste up to 11.

If you like warm biscuits with butter, try Alaskan Pale Ale.
While the dark roasted malts in stouts and porters make for coffee and chocolate flavors, the lighter malt in an American pale ale makes for tastes more akin to fresh bread or cookies. Most APAs have a hop bite that can almost overpower the malt end of things, but the Alaskan tastes like the product of a local bakery.

If you like chocolate syrup, try the Mikkeller Black.
There isn’t any chocolate in Mikkeller’s insanely intense imperial stout, but you wouldn’t know that from the taste. The Black is all luscious milk chocolate, and the brew has a a hell of a thick body – not exactly the consistency of Hershey’s Syrup, but not far off.

If you like a stack of waffles with maple syrup, try the Dogfish Head Immort Ale.
The masters of unique flavors over at Dogfish put a ton of interesting ingredients into the Immort Ale, including maple syryp, peat-smoked barley, juniper berries, and vanilla. Of all of those, the syrup comes through with the most intensity, and everything mixes to a breakfast doused in maple and fresh berries.

If you like bacon, try the Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier Marzen.
Rauchbier – German for “smoked beer” – is a beer that’s been made from malt smoked over a flame. The process makes for BBQ flavors, slightly sweet with a smokey kick. The Aecht Schlenkerla Marzen comes out with more bacon that most, which this drinker certainly appreciates.

If you like chocolate-vanilla swirl soft serve, try the Dieu Du Ciel Aphrodite.
THIS. A well-nigh perfect beer, brewed with vanilla and chocolate.

If you like honey, try a braggot like Brother Adam’s Bragget.
Braggots exist somewhere between mead and beer, and are brewed with honey, malt and hops. This leaves the brewer with a sweet beer, and the honey flavors are particularly powerful when the beer is fresh. The Brother Adam’s is a great introduction to the style, and forgoes the spices that muddle up the flavor in some other examples of the style.

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I’ll end with two questions; Are there any beers that remind you of a particular food, drink or flavor? What are your favorite flavors, either in a beer or in general? I might be able to match you up with a brew if you haven’t found the right one for you just yet.

This post originally appeared on BrewsAndBooks.com.

Seriously, there should be holiday carols written about this event.

Though I got to sample quite a few beers from Oregon’s distinguished brewery, I found myself circling back to Rogue’s Shakespeare Stout. I’ve written before about my love for the beer – a pretty-much perfect oatmeal stout, and one of the brews that got me drinking craft beer. Novare had the Bard on both nitro-tap and cask, which was more than a little bit exciting. I couldn’t exactly smuggle in a 22oz bomber of the stuff to try the draught, cask and bottled versions side-by-side, I was able to try the first two and then dash out (Science… Sort Of style) and have a bottle with my other notes in hand. It wasn’t exactly a vertical tasting, but it was close.

Quick primer for the uninitiated; often, beer tastings are split into vertical and horizontal tastings, two terms that were stolen borrowed from the wine world. A horizontal tasting is a lineup of multiple different beers from different breweries brewed in the same style. If you were to try, for example, American-style IPAs from Stone, Dogfish, Shipyard, Samuel Smith and Bells and compare them, that would be a horizontal tasting. A vertical tasting is multiple vintages of the same beer. So if you had the Sierra Nevada Bigfoots from 2005-2010, that’d be a vertical tasting. I’m not sure where tasting multiple versions of the same beer falls, but my gut tells me vertical. If this isn’t right – lord knows my logic isn’t perfect – please let me know.

So, here we go. Three versions of the same beer, viewed through the beer-rating framework laid out by RateBeer – aroma, appearance, taste, palate and overall. I’m not gonna re-review a beer that I love too much to have any real perspective on, but I’ll try and highlight the differences between the versions.

Aroma; This is where the three versions of the Shakespeare were most similar. Every one had a rich, dark chocolate smell and a hint of some toasted barley. The standout difference was the pungent Cascade hop aroma in the cask version of the beer. Shakespeare has always struck me as a reasonably hoppy stout, but the grapefruit citrus nose was way heavier in the cask version.

Appearance; In terms of body, the three versions were well-nigh indistinguishable. Motor oil black, through and through, The head of each beer told a different story. The draught version, straight from a nitro tap, had a malted milk creaminess and thickness that didn’t really dissolve until I finished the pint. The bottled brew has a slightly thinner head, with a consistency more soapy than creamy. Still, the cap stuck around for most of the brew. The cask version pulled with practically no head, and looked still – not even a stray bubble – from the first sip to the last.

Taste; One beer, three faces. The same elements are present in all three, of course. Chocolate, coffee, bitter citrus hops, a bit of oats or oatmeal. The difference among them is what’s on the main stage flavorwise, and what is off in the wings. On the cask version, the flavor follows the nose – way more pronounced hop flavors than I’m used to in a stout, balanced by sweet cocoa and a touch of coffee. In the bottle, the coffee is in the spotlight, and oats come in a close second. Of the three, there’s certainly the least hops in the bottle, and they come through a bit more spicy than citrusy. On nitro tap, bitter chocolate comes through the strongest. It may be because I associate a certain creaminess with the style, but on nitro I’d practically mistake the Shakespeare for a chocolate stout. Thankfully, all three versions still taste wonderful.

Palate; Things play out quite how you’d expect. The cask version has an oily slickness, but still has plenty of heft and the fullest, heaviest body of the three. The nitro version has the expected creaminess, and is smooth and rich – think the feel of a latte on your tongue. It isn’t often I use “chewy” as a descriptor in my reviews, but that’s definitively the feel on the bottle version. It has the lightest feel of the three, and the carbonation makes it downright effervescent by comparison. There’s just something about the consistency that screams chewy to me, and it’s a pleasant beer to roll around on your tongue before swallowing.

Overall; All three are full-bodied, flavorful, and dangerously drinkable for a pretty big stout. When it comes down to it, my preference really comes down to what I’m in the mood for. If it’s cold and I need a thick and slightly bracing beer with a bitter kick, give me the cask. If I’m going smooth, velvety and luxurious, nitro all the way. Looking for balance, a coffee kick and the most traditionally oatmeal stout-y of the three? Bottle.

It’s always a hoot to try a bunch of variations on a beer, be it different examples of the same style, different vintages of the same beer, or different versions of a single brew. Since this time I was approaching one of my favorite beer, I was thrilled that all three version were still super-tasty. Have you had a chance to try one, two or all three takes on the Shakespeare Stout? What was your favorite?

On the first page of his new beer guide Great American Craft Beer, Andy Crouch writes “with the bounty of amazing beers available in every corner of America, never before has there been a better time or place to be a beer drinker.” Thus begins one of the best cases for American exceptionalism that I’ve read in years – not in the traditional political or social sense, but in the realm of brewing and beer. Great American Craft Beer isn’t just a new book to add to the increasingly crowded family of “beer guides.” The compendium is a love letter to craft beer in the US of A, and that there’s enough to fill a 300+ page book is a testament to a brewing movement that’s barely thirty years old.

The bulk of Great American Craft Beer - about 2/3rds of it’s considerable girth - is devoted to profiling nearly 350 American beers across dozens of styles.  This guide to great beers is bookended by chapters titled “Exploring Beer” (an overview of the history of beer and brewing in the US and abroad) and “Enjoying Beer” (which covers proper glassware, beer tasting, pairing beer with food and great American bars). Taken together, the book becomes a comprehensive guidebook like The Naked Pint or Tasting Beer instead of another endless list of beers. It’s worth mentioning that the foreword to Great American Craft Beer was written by Sam Calagione, which is always a treat.

So, the book itself. Crouch begins the book with “Exploring Beer”, and covers brewing history around the world in concise, 2 to 4-page pieces. I first came to Andy’s work through his short freelance articles and writing for Ale Street News, Beer Advocate Magazine, BeerScribe.com and other beer-iodicals. Crouch has a real gift for writing short and punchy pieces, and this introductory section is well-suited for his style. If you’ve read any books about beer, there probably aren’t any surprises to be found in the bits on brewing processes, styles and beer history. However, some of the writing – particularly “The One Beer” , “A Beer For All Seasons” and “The Session Beer” – are unique to this book and fantastic reads. The whole chapter, even if it has some retreads, is written with Crouch’s regular verve and wit.

The massive middle section of the book, “The Style and Flavor of Beer”, is the traditional beer guide part of Great American Craft Beer. Across 57 styles (and 45 states), Crouch picks six great examples each of IPAs, honey beers, bocks and the rest. Each style gets a quick introduction with some history and characteristics to look for, then each beer gets a few sentences of description. Some other less popular or very unique styles like Berliner Weiss and gluten-free beers don’t get 6-beer sections, but instead receive informative sidebars.

If you’ve never read any of Crouch’s beer reviews, you’re in for a treat with this book. Beer reviewers are occasionally (and rightfully) accused of having a limited vocabulary when writing about beer, and the author is doing his best to expand our vernacular. Cotton candy hops, notes of graham cracker, “armpit stinky” – Crouch isn’t necessarily Gary Vaynerchuk, but he’s got the same panache for describing what he smells, sees and tastes.

Let’s get this out of the way – your favorite beer might not be in this book. As the author notes at the start of the guide (and again on his blog), a lot of thought went into balance among the selections. The balance isn’t just in flavor, but also geography, availability and production. I’d just suggest that you remember the book is called “great American” craft beer, not “the best” craft beer or “your favorite” craft beer. The book provides a snapshot of some of the beer being produced in the states in 2010, and personally I found a perfect mix (probably about 33-66) of beer I’ve tried and loved and new names to seek out.

The final part of Great American Craft Beer, “Enjoying Beer”, is the practical advice section. If you’ve had any questions about freshness, aging, glassware, tasting methodology, or cooking and pairing with beer, all those and more get their due. The book ends with “25 Great American Beer Bars”, a listing of beer meccas to visit to try some of the 350+ profiled brews and many more.

Though it isn’t something I’d usually mention in a review, I want to make special note of the index(es) in Great American Craft Beer. In the final pages of the book, there are alphabetical indexes by beer, beer style, and brewery, as well as an index of breweries by state. Frankly, the book has the best index I’ve ever seen in a beer book. Too often, it’s a pain to track down a certain beer or brewery in a single alphabetical index. It’s so easy here, any problems would have to be attributed wholly to user error. We all know many beer geeks will pick up the book solely to see what Crouch has to say about their favorite beer or local brewery, and Great American Craft Beer makes this a total breeze.

Like The Naked Pint, Great American Craft Beer is a book that has some sex appeal for beer lovers from novices to experts. For beginners, Crouch attacks tasting technique, history and all kinds of beer minutia in a super-accessible way. If you’re a dyed-in-the-wool beer geek, then yes, some bits on history and glassware are probably retreads. If you’re on a budget and own a bunch of beer guides already, you’ll want to leaf through Great American Craft Beer to make sure it has enough “new” material to excite you. Still, the wit in the writing, the wonderfully descriptive beer reviews and some of the pieces that are uniquely Andy merit a purchase in this reviewer’s opinion (and I know from beer guides).

This week was one of those weeks where there didn’t seem to be a singular big story in the craft beer world. No Scots we bottling beer in animal carcasses. None of the United States’ biggest brewers were merging or being purchased by foreign companies. Here in the Northeast, there wasn’t a massive beer fest to attend for some schmoozing. Despite this, there are still plenty of other stories worth rounding up. Among them; big news for craft brewers Dogfish Head, Oskar Blues and Magic Hat, a couple surprising polls and studies, and one more shot fired in the super-strong beer competition.

Oskar Blues playing catch-up to thirst for its beers
File this one under “there are worse problems to have.” Colorado brewers (and forward guards in the canned craft beer movement) Oskar Blues are still experiencing exponential growth, and the train doesn’t seem to be stopping anytime soon. Blues produces 29,500 barrels of beer in 2009, and 12,500 in 2007 – with new tanks installed last week, they’ll potentially brew 60,000 barrels next year. Still, this isn’t enough to cover demand, and Oskar Blues has had to pull out of eight of the 26 states to which it distributes.

As I  said, there are worse problems to have than too much demand – but I feel wicked bad for the residents of those 8 states.

Craft beer sales, volume grows
Craft beer sales are up for the first half of 2010, with significant increases in both sales (12%) and volume (9%). Each is up about 3% more than last year, when sales and volume grew at 9 and 5 percent. Craft beer also looks to be the high point in the beer world, as beer volume sales as a whole are down nearly 3%.

Let’s chalk this up as another score for the good guys. Looks like in flavor and finances, craft brewers continue to be at the forefront of the industry.

Sorry To Say, The 120 Is Not On The Way…
Bad news for fellow Dogfish Head nuts – you’ll have to wait a little bit longer to see Dogfish’s 120-minute IPA on your shelves. The beer was almost ready to be bottled and shipped this week, but ran into enough issues at the brewery’s quality control checkpoints to be scrapped. According to Dogfish founder Sam Calagione, “we are more interested in preserving our long-term reputation for quality than we are pacifying short term frustrations with not getting this batch out on a certain timeline.” He does, happily, expect a batch of the 120 to make it to stores before the end of the year.

It’s always a bummer to see beer disappear like this, but good on Dogfish for holding their stuff to high standards when other brewers might have pushed it out the door.

Drinking edges up in US, with beer still favorite
67 percent of American adults say they have an alcoholic beverage on occasion, the highest level in 15 years. And what are Americans drinking? Beer is the most popular, making up about 2/5ths of the alcoholic drinks gulped. Wine and liquor follow closely, preferred by 32% and 21% of the folks looking to have a libation.

Click on through to the article for a bunch of interesting stats about how alcohol consumption splits along gender lines, education, income level and religion.

5 arrested for beer run ring
Pro tip; don’t steal beer and trade it for meth. For oh so many reasons.

Vermont’s Largest Brewery to be sold
Since last weekend, a “beer industry publication” has been reporting that Magic Hat in South Burlington, Vermont will be sold to North American of Rochester, N.Y. Comments from brewery employees are few and far between, but when it comes to a potential sale “no comment” often means a lot. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as other breweries purchased by (or with distribution deals with) big brewers like Widmer,  Red Hook and Kona have continued to produce beer. The author of the article sites another great Vermont example in Ben & Jerrys, which has hardly switched to mass-produced swill ice cream since being purchased by Unilever 10 years ago.

Let’s hope things don’t change too much. I’m not Magic Hat’s biggest fan, but their beers certainly sound better than the stuff from North American’s other brand Genesee.

Ultra Strength Beer Race Revived With 120-Proof Dutch Concoction
Take that, super-strong beer! The Dutch have brewed a super-stronger beer! This week saw the release of a 60% ABV monster from Brouwerij het Koelschip, an Almere-based Dutch brewery. The brew, called “Start the Future” (an obvious shot at BrewDog’s “The End of History”), now holds the title of strongest beer in the world.

The beer’s brewer, Jan Nijboer, seems to have the right idea about this quest for beer that seems based more on ABV than something silly like taste. “It has become a little competition,” Mr Nijboer said. “You should see it as a joke.”

Frankly, my beer didn’t taste like beer.

Or, to be more accurate, it didn’t taste like beer in the way I expected.  Despite the range of flavors you can find in the multitudinous (over 80, according to RateBeer) styles that exist, I still expect a certain beeriness from my beers. What do I mean by that totally improvised word, you ask? Well, I expect what pretty much everyone expects – some malt sweetness, some hop bitterness, and maybe some esters from the yeast.

I’m not picky. These simple factors cover a rainbow of flavors. The malt can taste like coffee, chocolate, bread, biscuit, oatmeal, roast grain… you guys know how much the grain bill can cover. Similarly, hops range from the grassy varieties of the UK to the spicy Czech families, from citrusy Cascade hops of the American Northwest to the strawberry taste of Pacific Gem hops. Yeast, the oft-unpredictable loose cousin of the other ingredients, produces everything from buttery notes (Ringwood) to George Clinton-level funk (Brettanomyces).

So, we’ve already got a world of flavors that fall under the my umbrella of beery, just from the four traditional ingredients. Stack on top of that the fact that we aren’t living in the world of Reinheitsgebot anymore. Fruits, teas, spices, and all kinds of other crazy ingredients live in our beers. Hell, Dogfish Head probably couldn’t brew most of their lineup if they were only allowed to use water, barley and hops. For better brewers around the world, creativity is now King – which means throwing in everything but the kitchen sink along with the traditional ingredients of a brew.

This has led to a slew of beers that don’t taste like what the majority of the world thinks of as beer. Even as a enlightened experienced beer geek, there are still things that make me think “is this really a beer?” The BrewDog Smokehead, for example, tastes much more like a liquid fireplace than a beer. The Dogfish Head Olde School Barleywine is another brew that tastes more like a spirit to me than beer, especially on the first sip. Syrupy-sweet lambics like the US Lindeman’s line taste more like alco-pop sweetened soda than a brewski. Quercus Vitis Humulus, the Manhattan Project, Sam Adams Utopias; the list goes on and on. Heck, the Southern Tier Creme Brulee Stout I’m sipping on now tastes much more like a dessert than a beer.

This post was inspired, like most beer writing this week, by BrewDog’s release of a 55% ABV Belgian Blonde Ale called “The End of History.” The beer, the brewers admit themselves, is much closer to (and stronger than) a whiskey than a beer, and they even suggest drinking it from shot glasses instead of a pint glass. The high alcohol content, brewing process and flavors of The End of History (and BrewDog’s other high-octane beers) have made many question whether these brews should even be classified as beer, or if they’re more akin to liquor or wine.

Does  it matter? In the long run, of course not. The aim of craft brewers isn’t to make something  that tastes like a random columnist’s arbitrary definition of beer – it’s to make something that tastes good. Still, the fact that there’s a distinction in my mind makes me wonder if I’m the only one that considers this kind of thing. Has a beverage ever tasted so little like beer that it a) surprised the heck out of you, or b) turned you off enough to make you toss it and seek out something a bit with a bit more beeriness? Conversely, do you think that these extreme and extremely-strange beers are a good way to convince the many folks who shun beer – folks who don’t like traditional brews because of the “beer” taste – that there’s more to our favorite libation than meets the eye?

One of my favorite terms in the world of craft brewing is “gateway beer.” The fact is, despite being beer geeks, most of us haven’t always been in love with beer. Let’s face it – a pint of Budweiser, Miller or any other readily available beer that’s typically an American kid’s first doesn’t exactly inspire love in the craft. It takes a special beer to inspire confidence in brewers and make you want to try even more of the good stuff. For me, this ended up being a little beer from Kilkenny, drank at an Irish pub in a German city by an American kid.

Until this first enjoyable pint, my experience with beer had been more than enough to turn me off to the libation. At age 19, all my drinking had been illicit cans of Natural Ice, Rolling Rock and other schlock at college parties. As far as I knew, this flavor was all that beer had to offer. Pale, headless, super-carbonated and tasting of rice and corn – this was beer to me. The best stuff I’d seen to the contrary was the upperclassman that would bring sixer of Shipyard or Geary’s to a party, but having never tasted it, it looked just like all the other macro lagers.

This all changed when I met my girlfriend, who convinced me to fly to Berlin, Germany at age 19 to visit with her family. This, I figured, would be the thing to turn me on to beer if anything ever did. This was Germany, one of the beer-drinkingest nations on earth. Germany, one of the homes of jokes about how awful American beer was to their national beverage. Germany, land of Reinheitsgebot. If beer from the country with (arguably) the best beer in the world wasn’t going to turn me on to the stuff, I was ready to write off beer and stick to cocktails.

The trip didn’t start off great in terms of changing my mind. On the flight over I had a bottle of Heineken, the one non-American beer the airline had. Clear and bland, the only different between a Heine and what I’d drank before was a new skunky odor and flavor. This was it, then. Rum and whiskey for me from then on.

Luckily, my aforementioned girlfriend – already a beer-lover from a beer-loving family – labored to get me to give beer another chance. A few days into our trip, we were aching for a bit of familiar language and found our way to an English bar. Despite being in the center of Germany’s largest city, this round with beer was going to have a decidedly Allied feel. Katy ordered a Guinness, which was still a bit on the intimidating end for a newbie like me. I went for the lighter Kilkenny.

This beer was the one. I finally got it. I can’t remember enough about the beer to do a full review, but it tasted like the opposite of every beer I’d tried before. Served on a nitro tap, the ale was creamy and super-smooth. The color was a rich ruby-brown, not translucent or urine-colored like the beer I’d had before. And the flavor … there was flavor! Not rice and corn, but toffee and toasted grain and caramel and even some grassy hop bitterness at the end. British jabs at the flavorless nature of American beer finally made sense to me.

As you might expect, this turned me around on trying beer in Germany. With an excellent guide (pro tip – if you want to get into beer, date a German girl), I discovered the Schneider & Sohn beers, Guinness and Harp, and an entire beer style in Berliner Weisse. This was all in Germany, mind you. After getting home to the states, I found Stone, Rogue, Dogfish Head, Allagash, and basically the world of craft beer as a whole. I started homebrewing. I started going to beer festivals. And, of course, I started writing about beer.

What was your gateway beer? Did you have it halfway around the world, or right in your backyard? Was it a brew that you’re still in love with, or something you look at as average or not so special now that you’re a serious beer geek? Let’s hear the beers and the stories behind them in the comments.

In the interest of offering an alternate opinion, here’s a smart and well-written post from Erik at Top Fermented that basically discounts the idea that “gateway beers” exist. Though we’re really talking about different things (the beer that turns you onto good beer vs. a mythical beer that’ll turn anyone on to craft), his post is still necessary reading.

Mainers love their local beer. If there’s anything you can take from this series so far, it’s that the people of Maine – and Portland in particular – are fierce defenders and passionate imbibers of locally brewed beer. For decades (two decades for Gritty’s, one for Sebago), the two breweries I’m looking at today have been staples in local pint glasses and refrigerators. Neither has quite the distribution around the US as an Allagash or a Shipyard, but it’s almost impossible to go to a bar in Maine and not see at least one tap devoted to Sebago and another to Gritty’s. Both also operate stellar brewpubs – bars with some of the best pub fare available in Maine.

Gritty McDuff’s

While DL Geary Brewing holds the title of the original Maine microbrewery, Gritty McDuff’s Brewing Company has their own distinction as the state’s first brewpub. Founded in 1988 by Ed Stebbins and Richard Pfeffer, the Gritty’s on Fore Street in Portland was the first of many brewpubs hoping to bring a bit of the British publican culture to Maine’s Old Port. Stebbins is perhaps the more recognizable of the two – the happy bartender on every Gritty’s label is a young Ed. Since opening that original pub on Fore Street in Portland, Gritty McDuff’s has expanded, now boasting restaurants complete with brewing operations on Main Street in both Freeport and Auburn.

Like fellow local brewers Shipyard and Geary’s, Gritty McDuff’s sticks very closely to the classic British brew tradition. In Auburn and Freeport, the copper-topped, brick-faced brew kettles are based on designs from the Ringwood Brewery in Hampshire, England. Gritty’s brews and a handful of classic styles year-round (the Best Bitter, Best Brown, Black Fly Stout, Pub Style, and often a Pale and a Light), and very traditional seasonal ales – each is simply a variation on a traditional English bitter. In recent years, McDuff’s has experimented a bit more with US styles, and the newest addition to their beer family is an IPA hopped with very American Cascade, Warrior and Willamette hops.

At the Auburn, Freeport and Portland locations, Gritty McDuff’s offers a fine selection of British and Atlantic fare – a hybrid of the hearty food of the UK and the local seafood flavor. All locations the host live music and events, with a particularly busy schedule at the Portland location. And of course, in the tradition of great local watering holes everywhere, Gritty’s has a mug club that’ll net you extra beer and some pretty swank discounts, no matter which location you call home.

Gritty McDuff’s
396 Fore Street
Portland, ME 04101-4026
(207) 772-2739

Sebago Brewing Company

Sebago Brewing Company is, in my mind, one of Maine’s most underrated breweries. The quickly-growing brewery tends to get lumped in with Maine’s British-style brewers by locals and beer geeks, but Sebago is actually producing beers that fit snugly into the American brewing style. In fact, you won’t find Fuggles or Maris Otter here – Sebago brews with all American ingredients. They may not be as on the cutting edge style-wise as Allagash or Marshall Wharf , but they definitely brewing beers that are hard to find from other Maine breweries.

Sebago opened the doors to their first location, a brewpub in South Portland, in 1998. Since then, expansion has been fast and furious. Now, the Sebago crew can count Kennebunk, Portland’s Old Port and the village in Gorham as their homes as well. The South Portland location has also seen some improvement, recently moving to a brand-new facility with much more space and a great custom bar. In his book The Good Beer Guide to New England, Andy Crouch notes that (at least initially) Sebago was better known for food at their pubs than their beer. While the beer now gets a bit more attention, the menus at each restaurant are still worthy of high praise. You won’t find a better plate of potato nachos anywhere.

Sebago brews a small (compared to some of Maine’s other brewers) line of beer, with four regular offerings and a smattering of seasonals. An IPA, Brown, Red and Stout round out the regular line-up, and at different times of the year you can find a hefe, a winter warmer, a porter and a blueberry ale. Recently, brewer Kai Adams has experimented with some more unique beers, leading to the creation of the “Single Batch” series. Some of these – particularly the Bourbon Barrel Stout – are among the best beers brewed in Maine recently, regardless of brewery.

Sebago Brewing Company
164 Middle Street
Portland, ME 04101
(207)775-2337

I’m not going to cover everything I tried at the fest – it was, ahem, a lot – but I’ll mention everything that I have something to say about. With a couple of one-off exceptions, everything should be linked to the RateBeer page for the beer, so you can see how much I match up with the geek zeitgeist. A loud, populated and fluorescent-lit venue isn’t the ideal environment for tasting beer, but I’ll get across what I can. If you were at the fest and tried something I didn’t mention, or have something to say about the beers I got to, please chime in down in the comments!

Atwater Vanilla Java Porter – Going by the reviews here on RateBeer, it looks like Atwater has had some serious problems with infected bottles of this beer – “gusher” is a common description. Luckily, the beer didn’t have any problems on tap. Things were a little heavy on the vanilla end (more sweet than the coffee could balance out), but it was still a balanced, tasty beer that tasted more than a little like a latte.

Sam Adams Kosmic Mother Funk – A really lactic-y sour beer – a nice change of pace after all the more earthy Belgian-style funk brews at the fest. Kind of a Berliner/Wit hybrid, with some spice and citrus along with all the sour.

Ommegang Zuur – A tasty, fairly standard Flemish Brown with some extra fruit flavors thrown in. Cherry, apple, oak, and toffee with some malty sweetness at the end.

Brooklyn Buzz Bomb Ale – Quite the braggot. Bright gold with a fluffy white head, the beer has wildflower honey up front that mixes well with orange flavors and some citrus from the dry-hopping process. Right up there with Brother Adam as one of the best braggots I’ve had.

Cape Ann Tea Party – Can’t say I enjoyed this one quite as much as Steve. With a lot of brewers experimenting with teas in pale and wheat beers, I commend Cape Ann for trying something new and brewing a tea-infused barleywine. However, the choice of a smokey black tea with the sweet, strong beer just ended up mixing too many flavors and leaving me, literally, with a bad taste in my mouth.

Cisco Dark Woods – Cisco went nuts with the oak-aged beers this year, bringing a cherry wheat, a Belgian wit and a stout aged in barrels. An antidote to all the liquor-aged beers on the market, the Dark Woods was a stout aged in Syrah (a type of wine) barrels. The aging really put an interesting spin on a pretty standard stout, adding pepper and blackberry flavors to make a powerful brew.

Goose Island Black Cat Bourbon County Stout – Beer of the show. One of the most intense beers I’ve ever had, right up there with Mikkeller Black and Dogfish’s World Wide Stout. LOTS of bourbon, backed up by a roasty, chocolate stout. The finish is pleasantly bitter, not from hops but from the coffee. YUM.

John Harvard’s Strawberry Wheat – Another of the few misses of the show. Though it’s a strawberry beer, there wasn’t any berry flavor I could pull out. At the end of the day, the lack of any color or flavor or anything from the strawberries meant this was just another average wheat beer.

New Century Moonshot / Edison Light – Ah yes, the beers made famous by Beer Wars. While I appreciate what Rhonda Kallman struggled through to get her beer on the market, at the end of the day what matters to me is the beer. And brother, Moonshot and Edison Light aren’t great. Essentially two watered down macro-style lagers, the only difference worth mentioning was the caffeine in the Moonshot.

Rogue John John Juniper – Hello, spruce! It’s a shame that, despite living in the spruce-filled woods of Maine, I have to hit a west coast brewery to get some spruciness in my damn beer. The John John, a version of Rogue’s Juniper Pale aged in spruce gin barrels, is an intensely piney beer, and manages to pull most of the flavor from the gin without any booziness. Everything works, and this is one of the few barrel-aged beers light and crisp enough to be sessionable.

White Birch Berliner-Weisse – More of an imperial Berliner-Weisse than a standard one, White Birch’s sour beer clocks in north of 6% ABV. I wouldn’t have minded a splash of syrup in the glass, but the beer alone was crisp and pleasantly sour enough to work on it’s own.

Oskar Blues Gubna – Holy citrus bomb! The newest beer in the Oskar Blues family is an intense imperial IPA, hopped only with Summit hops. The use of a single variety of hop really lets the grapefruit and lemon flavors come through, and the rye, Munich malt and barley provide a perfect stage without the hops being overly harsh.

Martha’s Velvet Elvis Vanilla Bean Stout – A vanilla-chocolate milkshake of a beer. Perfect finish to the show. Full of flavor and silky smooth.

The Crowd; Beer Advocate pegged attendance for each session around 5,000 people – a 25% increase from the number of people at each session last year. Luckily, the ACBF increased the size of the venue significantly this year, so the crowd of people never felt crushing or oppressive. While lines did become a bit of an issue by the end of the event, I never felt like I couldn’t move a few feet to the side and have some breathing room. There was definitely a good mix of beer lovers in attendance, from local craft beer fans to the biggest of uber-beer geeks. Although there were a handful of folks there aspiring to get as drunk as possible (why you’d pregame before 3-and-a-half hours of free beer is beyond me), the majority of the crowd was beer-lovers and folks drinking responsibly.

Breweries; Hard to sneeze at your choice of 86 different breweries. While it was a blast to try things from breweries “from away” at last year’s ACBF, there was a shift this year to New England brewers and beer you could pick up in Boston. So bye-bye to Surly, Terrapin and Shorts, hello to Clown Shoes, Element and Earth Bread + Brewery. Although the beer geek in me cries a bit for the loss of these big Midwestern brewers’ booths, it makes sense – why give your beer away to people that can’t buy it after they leave?

Beer; Compared to the Extreme Beer Fest that Beer Advocate throws in February, the choices for beer tend towards the conventional at the American Craft fest. Session beers and traditional pales and browns, which would be tossed kicking and screaming from the EBF, found plenty of space and fans at last weekend’s fest. With each brewery bringing an average of four different beers (and some serving close to ten), there was happily room for some stranger and stronger brews on the roster as well. Breweries that make rare, highly sought-after beers also snuck in a few gems – New England brought some Imperial Stout Trooper, and Cisco and Allagash brought barrel-aged versions of some of their line.

Speakers; A noticeable – but unsurprising – change this year was a lack of guest speakers and panels during the three ACBF sessions. In the past, speakers like Andy Crouch and Garrett Oliver have talked about beer in rooms off the side of the convention center, and last year there was a free screening of Anat Baron’s documentary Beer Wars. These sessions were always a free opportunity for some beer education and a respite from the crowd, so it was a bit sad to see them gone. However, they never seemed hugely popular (hey, there is free beer if you stay on the session floor) so I can’t say I’m surprised to see them gone.

Lines; For the most part, lines moved quickly and smoothly. Almost all the attendees practiced good line etiquette, snagging a sample then quickly shuffling out of the way. Rarely was a wait longer than five minutes. There were, unfortunately, exceptions. Rogue, Dogfish Head and Pretty Things were the chief offenders, and I ended up in the line for Rogue for almost fifteen minutes for a 2 oz sample. There isn’t too much to be done to remedy this on the planners’ end – popular beer is popular – but maybe a couple more volunteers pouring samples would help move things along. After the long Rogue wait, it was disappointing to see that there was only one guy slinging samples in their booth.

Food; After a few years at the Seaport World Trade Center, the food situation has been pretty well perfected. Hot dogs steamed in Harpoon, Whiskey River pulled pork, beer nuts, stuffed pretzels, fruit cups, veggies… plenty of tasty food was available to soak up all the beer. I miss the Belgian waffles served at the Cyclorama beer fests, but that’s more of a request for next year than a complaint about this one.

Swag; About 2/3 of the breweries had t-shirts, glassware or other swag for sale, and free coasters and flyers abound. This year, the crew switched from hard plastic tasting glasses to disposable, biodegradable cups; not as long-lasting as the old ones, but a genius “green” choice considering that most attendees tossed them in the trash on the way out.  I’m only really mentioning merch to brag about the awesome Duck-Rabbit snifter I picked up, which might be my new favorite piece of glassware.

Bathrooms; Still the blemish on an awesome beer fest. The bathrooms – a bank of port-o-potties outside the venue – are some of the foulest smelling things I’ve ever been around. I’m not sure what can be done (lots of people + lots of alcohol + well, you saw the food I listed = bathroom breaks), but it isn’t a terribly pleasant experience. Kudos to the fact that they facilities are, at least, as far away from the floor of the show as possible, and outside in the fresh air. I’ll keep my fingers crossed, but at the end of the day they might simply be the most elegant solution to an inelegant problem.

At the end of the day, bathrooms and the occasional line aside, the ACBF is one of the best beer festivals in the country. Each year offers steady improvements in terms of size, space, selection and crowd control, so you better believe that I’ll be on Boston’s waterfront again next June. Keep your eyes on the Hop Press for Steve and Carla’s impressions (read Steve’s first impressions here), and check back here this weekend for my rundown of the best, worst and most surprising of what I drank at the ACBF.

Rum Riot, founded by Kyle Jongerden and Benjamin Jones, takes it’s name from the Portland Rum Riot in 1855. As the story goes, the recently passed  “The Maine Law” read: “here ye, here ye, all alcohol shall be prohibited!” Portlanders, who then and still today like their booze, weren’t too happy. Thousands of protested descended on Portland’s City Hall to protest the law on June 2nd of ‘55 under threat of gunfire, and in the wake of the protest the law was repealed. Rum Riot Brewing thus presents to you “a dedication to all Portlanders’ passion, independence, and desire for alcohol.”

Rum Riot’s beer is readily available on the first Friday of every month for Portland’s art walk. At the Two Point Gallery, the brewery brings free beer on every first Friday, and occasionally has 22oz bottles for sale. Right now, there isn’t much info to be found on Rum Riot’s plans for expansion, if any exist. They do at least offer plenty of info about their current brews – Belgian Summer, German Summer and American Summer as of June. You best bet is to keep an eye on the RR Facebook page, the guys’ site, and talk with the guys if you can make it to Two Point.

Rising Tide, founded by Nathan Sanborn, has a more solid schedule for their beer – things should be on shelves and in bars around August of this year. Based in Portland like Rum Riot, we’re facing a veritable flood of good beer by the end of 2010. Here’s the short description of the brewery from their site;

Rising Tide Brewing Company is a small-scale start-up brewery with a focus on handcrafted artisanal ales that draw on traditions from around the world. We will be brewing 90 gallons at a time and distributing locally to the southern Maine region in bottles and kegs.

Rising Tide is looking to launch with two beers, named Ishmael and Spindrift. Ishmael is a German alt, copper in color and brewed with US hops and Euro yeast. Spindrift looks like an interesting pale ale, brewed with barley, rye and wheat on the grain bill. For more information, you can check out the Rising Tide Facebook page, Twitter feed and website.

Finally, Baxter Brewing in Lewiston is moving full-steam ahead towards getting canned beer out to New Englanders. Hop Press rock star Carla Companion covered most of Baxter’s history and mission during her interview with founder Luke Livingston a couple weeks ago, so I’d definitely point you towards her column for a look at what Maine’s canning-est brewery is all about.

The only real updates I have to offer are on the Baxter groundbreaking last week – the first chance for the public to taste the brewery’s launch beers, Pamola Xtra Pale Ale and Stowaway IPA. The IPA was a bit harsh in this first batch, but the West-coast hop profile and body are right there. With a bit of tweaking before the launch, the Stowaway will be perfect. The Pamola, on the other hand, is already dynamite in a can. Biscuity, silky, and easy to drink with some citrus hoppiness, the Pamola tasted like it would be beyond easy to session. The closest beer I can compare it to is Southern Tier’s Hoppe, which isn’t a bad beer to be compared to.

With distribution exploding here in Maine (Southern Tier, Abita and Rock Art have all just arrived), we’re getting dangerously close to too much of a good thing with even more new local brewers. How’s everything looking in your neck of the woods? Any new beers or breweries to look forward to in the second half of 2010?