Total caps: 490

Breweries Represented: 28

Breweries with more than 10 caps (and % of total):

Schlafly – 17.8%

Firestone Walker/Nectar Ales – 12.4%

Budvar – 9.4%

Stone – 8%

Homebrew – 7.3%

Founder’s – 5.9%

Bell’s (all Two-Hearted) – 4.9%

Weihenstephaner (all Festbier) – 4.9%

Goose Island – 4.9%

Moosehead – 4.5%

Odell – 4%

Capital – 3.2%

Sierra Nevada – 2.2%

As “interesting” as these raw numbers are, I must add a few points for context. First, thanks to the generosity of Portland-bound friends Zac and Kate Duncan, I returned to the privileged class of people with kegerators, when Zac and Kate donated theirs to my cause.  Since that point, I’ve enjoyed the following:

1/4 bbl of Odell St. Lupulin

2 – 1/4 bbls of Odell IPA (2d keg in progress)

1 – 1/6 bbl of Urban Chestnut Zwickel (which lasted all of 7 days during the worst of this hateful summer’s heat)

1 – 1/6 bbl of Founder’s Red’s Rye

1 – 1/6 bbl of homebrew (still in progress)

So, taking the kegs into account,  Odell was far and away the most consumed brewery this year, basically tripling Schlafly. I’m very much in love with Odell’s IPA, and their St. Lupulin and (incredibly boringly named) Red Ale, all of which meld a serious punch of hop aroma and flavor, with a velvety malt load that just works for my palate. Founder’s also would get a significant bump, and Urban Chestnut would jump into the ranking.

Also missing from the above numbers are canned craft beer. I know I went through a couple of 12 packs of Capital Supper Club (thanks, Annie!) , and several (4, 5, 6?) six packs of Ska Brewing‘s Modus Hoperandi. I just did a crap job (read – no attempt at all) to track those this year. Sorry to the fine folks at Capital (who’d be finer if they distributed to St. Louis!) and Ska. Love your beers, but caps are easier to keep than cans.

Finally, I feel a need to explain the Moosehead entry. I grew up in Michigan, and, during college, Canadian beer was cheap.  Really cheap. In fact, when I moved to St. Louis, a case of Moosehead bottles at the store where I worked would set you back all of $12, and it was the most expensive of the Big 3 Canadian brands. When we were too flush with cash for bottom tier stuff like Weidemann’s, Beast or Schaefer (all at about $5 a case), but not spendy enough for craft, we went Canadian.

So, the summer of 2012 went through a rather oppressive phase. This isn’t uncommon (especially for someone from Michigan), but I was desperate for a beer I could chill and swill. I had been reading some mysteries set in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula during this period, many of which featured Canadian beer prominently. This triggered a nostalgic craving for some basic Canadian suds. Moosehead being the freshest of those at the Schnuck’s, I went with it. And enjoyed it. I might even do it again.

Previous years are here:

2010

2009

2008

2010 was my first full year without a kegerator, which definitely boosted the number of caps (I also kept track of cans in a spreadsheet and these are included in the numbers below).  The total for the year was 756 beers consumed.  The brewery breakdown is as follows for all breweries that had ten or more beers consumed:

Homebrew – 16.1%

Schlafly – 15.3%

Bell’s – 8.2% (over 2/3 was Two-Hearted)

Ska – 7.1%

Budvar – 5.5%

Weihenstephaner – 4.6% (all Festbier)

Sierra Nevada – 4.1%

Founder’s – 3.7% (all Red’s Rye, except for a single Breakfast Stout)

Capital – 3.6%

Big Sky – 3.4%

Lagunitas – 2.5%

Southern Tier – 2.2%

Ayinger – 2.1% (all but two were Oktoberfest)

New Glarus – 2.1%

Odell – 2.1% (all St. Lupulin)

New Belgium – 1.4%

Tallgrass – 1.4%

Pedantic aside:  Jolly Pumpkin likely would have made the list, near the bottom, but their caps are plain.  This year, I’ll be sure to identify them myself.

2010 was definitely the Year of Beer for me.  For whatever reason, my wine consumption was much lower than normal, and whisky was negligible until the last couple of months of the year.  I was pleasantly surprised to see homebrew already taking the quantity crown since I only resumed brewing part way through the year.  I expect its lead to increase in 2011 as I’ve been brewing regularly, and, apparently, drinking my homebrew regularly as well (that hasn’t always been the case).  In 2011, I’ll be shooting for better balance between beer, wine and whisky, and overall lower consumption.

Oh, and hey Capital! You see that you clocked in at #9 overall when you’re not distributed within  250 miles of my house? Please get a distributor in St. Louis.  I’m far from the only one who would buy a lot, as we have a severe craft lager deficit!  My consumption of Budvar would disappear if I could get Capital Pilsner here.  Thanks.

Previous Years are here:

2009

2008

Pedantic aside: My kegerator was up and running during ’08 and ’09, so the bottled numbers are much lower than this year.

First up was their Three-Hearted kit, an all-Centennial hopped American IPA inspired by Bell’s Two-Hearted Ale (probably my favorite beer ever).   I could not resist making a couple of tweaks – dropping the initial gravity to a more manageable 1.060, and using all of the hops in the kit by upping the dry hop amount.  I also did the ferment with some way past expiration Safale US-05 (like two years past . . .), which worked just fine, thank you very much.  I’m quite pleased with the result, and only have about a third of the batch left to drink.  I started drinking it too soon – the classic first batch of homebrew problem, and initial bottles were quite green, but it’s now drinking quite well.

Next was Northern Brewer’s Extra Pale Ale kit, inspired (I assume) by Summit‘s outstanding Extra Pale Ale.  I also tweaked the dry-hopping on this one, adding an ounce of Amarillo.  This one is still a touch green, so I’ve not fully formed an opinion on it yet.  Also fermented with a way out of date packet of US-05.  It’s alright so far, but I’m hoping it will continue to improve.

The most recent batch was the first wholly personal recipe of the great brewing restart of 2010.  I’m most excited by the fact that I’ve decided to utterly eschew styles in my recipe construction for a while (i.e. until it becomes boring).  This one is a mix of two row, raw wheat (about 30%) and a bit of carapils to 1.050, bittered with Columbus, with flameout additions of Citra, Centennial and Columbus, and fermented with a fresh satchel of US-05.  Everything apart from the yeast came from Kent at Missouri Malt Supply – a great local source for top quality brewing ingredients at virtually wholesale prices that evolved from homebrewers getting together to order full pallets from various malt suppliers.  I dry-hopped this beer last night with 30 grams of Citra, and 15 each of Columbus and Centennial.  I plan to leave it on the dry hops for 10 days and then package.  I’m very excited about the interplay of the citrus (duh) notes of the Citra with the raw wheat.

I’m also pleasantly surprised to find that I don’t mind bottling at all.  The key has been a repurposed tupperware tub that I previously used to hold sacks of grain.  It conveniently holds about 30 12 ounce bottles, meaning that sanitizing the bottles is a matter of about a half hour of work, rather than the hours I recall.  Add a spring-loaded bottle filler, and bottling is done in about an hour total.  Not too much longer than kegging used to take.

This was a transitional year as my kegerator died in early December.  Prior to that, I was well on track to meet my goal of less than 150 bottles opened.  Obviously, when draft was no longer available, bottles spiked, particularly since it was the holiday season and more drinking than usual was done by visitors and yours truly.

So, the overall total was 181 bottles opened in the house.  This year’s breakdown for breweries with more than 10 caps was as follows:

22 – Schlafly – 12.2%

17 – Capital Brewery – 9.4%

14 – Bell’s Brewing – 7.7%

13 – Short’s Brewing – 7%

13 – Southern Tier – 7%

11 – Pilsner Urquell – 6%

I also had caps from 15 other breweries (as well as 32 unidentifiable gold or black caps), which showed pretty good variety given the relative small sample size.  This next year will be interesting as bottled beer will be my exclusive source of malty goodness.

My goal is to not spend any more on beer than I did in 2009, which will be a bit of work given that draft beer represents a hefty savings over its bottled equivalent.  I’d also like to cut out any beer, like Pilsner Urquell, that’s brewed by bigass corporations, and increase the percentage of local beer.  We’ll see how that goes.  With Andrew doing a good job of keeping fresh Capital Pilsner in stock at Bon Vivant, I should be able to avoid the temptation of the sub-$15 12 packs of PU at Schnuck’s, even if it means drinking a bit less pilsner as a result.

This year was much better than last, with a total of only 225 caps in the container.  Here are the brewery totals:

38 – Bell’s Brewery – 16.8%

22 – Left Hand Brewing – 9.7%

18 – Capital Brewery – 8%

14 – Avery Brewing – 6%

14 – New Belgium Brewing – 6%

14 – Sam Adams – 6%

None of the other breweries in the stash cracked 10 caps.

The single biggest drop over last year was for Czech Pilsners (Budvar and Pilsner Urquell).  Combined, these were my top source of caps in 2007, but Budvar’s move to distribution by A-B (and 33 not carrying it anymore as a result), and a half barrel of Victory Prima Pils in the kegerator for a good chunk of the year really put a hurting on my consumption of Czech Pils.  I’m very surprised that Schlafly didn’t crack 10 caps (there were only 8), but I think having a keg of their Oatmeal Stout on has disuaded me from picking up as many bottles as I normally do.

Goals for this year?  Less bottles, more kegs.  Reducing bottles to 150-ish seems very plausible.  I also really need to turn my kegs more quickly (a hearty thanks to Dylan and Andrew for their patience on this front).  Once I work through the slight bottle backlog I have, bottled beer is out of the main fridge, and back into the kegerator.

Like most things I do, my experimentation was broad-ranging and pretty controlled.  I selected likely candidates – barley wines, old ales, lambics, dubbels, quads, etc. – bought fresh beer from quality stores, and let them rest in my cellar (the old coal storage room in my house – below grade, dark, and with a temp. range of 57F to about 62F over the course of a year), and sampled them at regular intervals.

I learned a lot, and don’t at all regret the experiments, but the core principles I picked up were: (1)  I prefer most beer, even “age-worthy” beer, fresh by a wide margin; and (2) apart from very hoppy beers, most beers don’t change much over the course of a year or two under my storage conditions.  So, these days, the beer portion of my cellar is down to about 30-40 beers, consisting mostly of: (1) New Belgium La Folie; (2) Cantillon Lambics (3 – 5 years); (3) Bell’s Expedition Stout (fresh, or 3-5 years); (4) Unibroue Maudite and Trois Pistoles (2.5-4 years) and (5) an oddball assortment of things with which I’m still experimenting.

I opened one of those experiments last night, Jolly Pumpkin‘s Oro de Calabaza, and received a real treat.  Jolly Pumpkin is a pretty unique brewery – it ferments in open vessels, ages completely in old oak barrels, and then bottle conditions its beers.  While some breweries might do one or even all of these processes for some (usually a small, experimental portion) of their production, Jolly Pumpkin does it for all of their beer.

Oro de Calabaza is a Belgian-inspired golden ale (think Duvel), that picks up some wild yeasts during Jolly Pumpkin’s brewing process.  Wild yeasts tend to eat different (and more!) sugars than “cultured” yeasts, and tend to work somewhat more slowly.  This bottle of Oro de Calabaza has been in my cellar for about a year, and upon opening it had a nose led by the tell-tale horseblanket aroma of brettanomyces, one of the more beer-friendly wild yeasts (it gets into wine sometimes too, where it quickly crosses the “interesting backdrop” to outright fault pretty quickly for most – it works well for my nose and palate in beer though).  Underneath were a rich malt base, and some light candied-fruit notes.  On the palate, the wild yeasts once again left evidence of their work in a thinner body and extremely dry finish (body and residual sweetness come to a significant degree from complex sugars that “cultured” yeast can’t eat, but wild ones can).  This made the beer even more food-friendly, and it was a terrific companion to my super-nachos made with pork from Hinkebein Farms (via Fair Shares ) that I braised in a broth made from my own homemade chili powder.  Oro de Calabaza has definitely moved from “cellaring experiment” onto my short list of beers that, for my palate, improve with some time in the cellar.

Bavarian wheat beers don’t have a lot of attraction for me either.  The yeast used tends to generate clove and banana-flavored esters that turn me off.  I’m mildly allergic to bananas (they make my throat itch like crazy), so perhaps I just have an inherent aversion to them.  Berliner Weisse is sadly too rare and too delicate (thereby suffering in its travels) to even merit discussion.

This more or less leaves me with Wits, which is a style I’ve historically liked quite a bit, but seem to have forgotten about.  I used to load up on cases of Celis White in Chicago when returning to St. Louis from Michigan.  Wit is a great style for St. Louis’ steamy Summers – light, but complex, with a subtle spicing adding to the mild esters from the yeast, and the sharpness of the wheat. They’re both food-friendly, especially with lighter Summer fare like salads, and refreshing to drink on their own.  The problem is availability.

Hoegaarden, the brewery founded by Pierre Celis in the 60′s that virtually revived the style, remains a classic, but I find it one of the least interesting wits available (plus, there’s the whole InBev angle).  However, I’ve recently had some fine craft brewed renditions from Great Lakes – their Holy Moses – and New Belgium Brewing – their Mothership Wit, and have really been enjoying, even craving them.  Since Great Lakes isn’t in these parts anymore, I think I’m going to have to grab a keg of Mothership once something kicks in the kegerator.

Personally, I’d love to see Bell’s bump a whole lot of the Boulevard Pale/Wheat tap handles that are around town. These are virtual clones of the even more widespread Schlafly Pale/Hefe duo, and there is no reason to offer both. Let’s go with our local version of this, and get more Bell’s in! A tap that would rotate Oberon (which is easily twice the beer of either of the Missouri American wheats) in the Spring and Summer with Porter or Kalamazoo Stout in the cooler months, and a Two-Hearted tap would be an excellent combo that would cover a lot of bases for many bars. More beer-centric places could also have a tap that rotates Bell’s Pale (a very solid APA that I’ve been revisiting lately) and Amber, and/or a specialty tap for things like Special Double Cream Stout, HopSlam, Expedition Stout, etc.

There are two big challenges to this plan. The first is the ability of Glazer’s, the local Bell’s distributor, to take on Summit, the local Miller distributor who also handles Boulevard, Coors, Sam Adams, Guinness, Corona, PBR, Leinenkugel’s and Heineken. Glazer’s seems to emphasize their spirits and wine portfolio much more than their beer, whereas Summit deals in beer only. Summit can also pitch a “complete” beer list to non-imaginative bar owners that includes well-known macro, import and big craft brands. Glazer’s needs to see what Bell’s does in other markets across the country – not just Michigan where is a major force, but also how it managed to succeed in the uber-competitive Chicago market, and St. Louis-size cities like Indianapolis and Minneapolis.

The second challenge is getting bar owners on board with the quality and variety that Bell’s offers. Bell’s has an incredibly solid line up, and can fill many holes in even simple beer lists. Bell’s Pale is a great example for which there aren’t local or import alternatives. Ditto the amazing line-up of Bell’s stouts. There just isn’t anything like it out there. Kalamazoo Stout, for example, is sooooo different from Guinness, and such a food-friendly beer, that it should be on tap in lots of places. Again, there is simply no local or import offering that covers this ground. I know that there is inertia to change from places with smallish beer lists, but Bell’s provides such a wonderful opportunity for expansion of offerings, and rotation of taps within its line-up, that it seems an easy sell to any marginally beer-saavy bar.

So, we’re being given a great beer gift and a tremendous opportunity. To my fellow beer lovers, I challenge you to ask for Bell’s at your local joints, and drink it when you see it. Not just Two-Hearted, but all of the other worthy offerings as well. To Glazer’s, GET TO IT! You’ve been given a second shot at a superstar brand with a product vastly superior to most of its competitors and very competitively priced to boot. You can and must sell the hell out of it! Finally, to the bar owners and beer buyers – give Bell’s a chance – not just Two-Hearted – but the other brands as well. Look at how well Bell’s sells around its distribution area. Sure, there is some initial ignorance to overcome, but the potential for growth of sales is immense.  This is an easy opportunity to make your establishment stand out, rather than being just another place that offers the same old line up of Summit-distributed beers.

As for me, I know I’ll likely have kegs of Bell’s in my kegerator all the time once it becomes available again, and no, it won’t just be Two-Hearted. I’m thinking of their Porter (my favorite version of the style) or Kalamazoo Stout. Mmmmmmm.

That being said, I’ve still been drinking, and I’ve had several things that were lovely to smell, and likely would have been lovely to taste, had I been so endowed at the time. Top of the list was a 1996 Dom. Druet Bourgueil Cuvee Beauvais, which was a lovely, mature Cabernet Franc. The Beauvais is one of Druet’s lower-level bottlings, but in a ripe vintage like 1996, it had plenty of stuffing to age beautifully for a decade. Lots of raspberries on the nose, with a hearty dose of green herbs. Tannins were fully resolved and it had a lovely, satiny mouthfeel. Very good stuff and I’m glad to have some more in the cellar (which I thriftily picked up at auction for $10 per about 5 years ago).

Beer has also been going down the gullet at a decent pace. We had a nice tasting at Carl’s house last Saturday. The stars of the show were two bottlings from the Craft Brewer’s Conference in 2002 and 2004. Each year, brewers in/around the host city come up with a special beer for the conference. The 2002 was a joint effort of Tomme Arthur, Peter Zein, and Lee Chase (then of Stone Brewing). It was a pale Belgian brewed with lemongrass, and had held up very well in the cellar. Really nice spiciness from the yeast, without being overwhelmed, and fresh cut from the citrusy lemongrass. The 2004 was a completely different approach – a blend of seven regular releases from seven different brewers – mostly stouts (including Victory’s Storm King), and one IPA. While this could have been a real trainwreck, it was actually really, really good.

Another standout for me was a new beer from a new brewery. My father-in-law picked it up for me at a wineshop that just opened near his apartment in Chicago, and brought it to accompany the Thanksgiving I missed. It was the L’Amalthee from Brasserie Lebbe, which is located, in all places in the Hautes-Pyranees department of France – not exactly a brewing hot bed. The beer had a great raw grainy nose, and a wonderful polished quality from its brief period of lagering. This would be a great food beer. After reading about the brewery (something I didn’t do until after we’d tasted it), I like the beer even more. Charles Neal is an outstanding wine importer, and I’m very pleased to see him bring in such a quality beer.

Finally, Carl was kind enough to open a bottle of Russian River’s Biere de Garde, Perdition. This was simply a gorgeous beer. Lots of depth to the malt, and a wonderfully complex grainy, spicy aroma. Wonderful stuff.

Lowlights of the tasting were two of Bell’s Batch series. My next to last Batch 6000 is starting to show some unpleasant oxidation notes. This one has been a fun ride though – always drinkable, and genuinely evolving in the cellar over the years. The last one will definitely be drunk up this winter though. One of Zac’s Batch 7000s showed me that I was smart to trade my stash away to someone who enjoyed them. It’s still a monstrous beer, with a whole lot of hop bitterness, but its malt load is starting to show notes of soy sauce, which is an absolute non-starter for me. Blargh.

Lots of other good beers were opened, but most of all it was nice to be with friends.