BeerAdvocate Magazine Issue #9
The September 2007 issue of BeerAdvocate Magazine, or the “Beer Education Spectacular” was a decent issue of the magazine that keeps me boasting that this is the best beer rag out right now.
This magazine has been in and read for quite some time now so I am just going to go with the flow and hit the points I want to talk about. My favorite, ‘9 Steps to Beerdom’, featured one of my favorites Vinnie Cilurzo of Russian River Brewing. The few bits of information I know about Vinnie makes me totally dig this dude, plus he makes way cool adventurous beers that are hard to get a hold of but totally bring the hop wallop and rock the funk. There was a neat article on “Open Source Beer” where breweries are posting there recipes on their websites and making them available for others to use, and tweaking them based on the consumers demands. It’s like open source software stuff where the main goal is really to just have a superior product for all in the long run. One of the breweries that is experimenting with this idea with one of their beers is Flying Dog which I think is totally cool.
The “main” article in the issue titled ‘Get Schooled’ which talked about all the different beer schools, the best beer bars on well known college campuses, the best beer books, and how not to be an idiot drunk fell kind of flat in my opinion. I really could have done without the sections on the pubs and the not being drunk, to me they were too localized and too obvious. The information on the schools were good but brief, I’ve read more on the school’s opening pages of their website for some of the schools, I wanted to learn something new. I won’t bitch about the beer reviews section this time, but I will say “hey look!” because one of Iron Hill’s beers got reviewed, the FE 10th Anniversary Ale. The Bros. gave it a B, I think that is fair. I remember the first time I tried the FE10 I wasn’t really into it and thought it was kind of hot and young, but it has gotten better in subsequent tastings. I should pick up a bottle of that stuff soon.
And finally towards the end of the magazine was a good piece on food and beer, their ‘Cuisine a la Biere’ article. This one was particularly good because it included variations on a base recipe for three different recipes: chili, sausages braised in onions and beer, and a beer float or beershake. They did a quite good job describing what additions or subtractions should be made with different pairings. So if you were interested in using a Wit, Tripe,l or Kriek for example in your chili they suggest pairing with duck, turkey, or chicken and go on to talk about different spice additions that would work. But lets look at it the other way and you knew you wanted to make a buffalo chili but didn’t know what kind of beer to use to cook with it they’d suggest a Brown Ale, Old Ale, or Flanders Red Ale. I dug this article a lot. I’m sure I’ll use it at least once to help me make something (boy that was a descriptive sentence).